When Dreams Change
by cymberleah
Summary: *Finished story* Knives. A few OCs. A desert. Angst. And finally, an ending.
1. No rest for the wicked

Yeah… I'm revising the chapter layout, as I am encountering numerous problems uploading new ones. 

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"Oh, thank you, Dream Dancer," she cried, looking at the portal that had opened by her. Colors and things that were almost colors swirled across it's surface in a gentle wave, enticing her to walk through. The only thing that held her from dashing through was her sense of gratitude to the being that had created it for her.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She repeated, her happiness temporarily overwhelming her ability to be any more erudite. She tried to think of anything else to say, but her joy was so simple that only the simplest of words seemed to fit. She took a step towards the portal, and another, then turned to face the being again.

"Thank you!"

The being just nodded its head and smiled at her. 

She turned again to look at the portal, savoring the moment. As soon as she passed through the rainbow before her, she would be in a land where all her dreams would come true. All the struggles of her life were about to pay off. All the pain she had gone through, all of the horrors she had witnessed and been a part of, what lay beyond this glistening door would sweep them all away. In this new world she would find love, and peace.

A small fear crossed her mind and she turned to the being again.

"How will I know him when I see him?" she asked.

*Dear child,* the being replied, *he will be the first person you see.*

Her last, final fear assuaged she stepped boldly through the curtain of light.

A moment of disorientation later she found herself in a hallway. The air was musty and smelled strongly of electronics and oil. It was a bit chilly, but not too bad she decided as goosebumps formed on her arms. She had known worse. It was very quiet, and there were no sounds of life. There was the sense of ventilation, and of machines working somewhere. . . that wasn't close, but she couldn't be anymore specific then that. She looked around, trying to make some sense of where she was. Behind her was only a wall, as blank and featureless as all the rest. That was not to say that there was nothing to see, as there were many wires, and many floor tiles, and even the walls looked to be sheets of something, but it is to say that they held no clues for her. 

She reached out and touched the wall on her right. Cool metal lay below her fingertips, and told her nothing of where she was. She felt a moments unease, but shoved it aside with logic. Dream Dancer sent me here, she reminded herself. It will be safe.

Logic still didn't make the dimly lit corridor in front of her seem any more inviting, but it did give her enough courage to walk forward in search of -- well, whatever she might find. Love, she reminded herself firmly, and peace. That's what I was promised. She trusted that Dream Dancer knew what was best for her, or at least that's what she told herself as she reached the end of the corridor and found herself at a crossroad.

Or a cross corridor, at least. The one she was following continued ahead, but the one that bisected it was larger and much more well lit. It was more likely that the new corridor would lead her to people, and her one true love, she thought hopefully. But what if Dream Dancer had put her in this particular corridor for a reason, she wondered? Should she continue on? 

She looked carefully to her left and to her right as she tried to make a decision. She was getting a bit nervous. Why had Dream Dancer introduced her to this world so far from anyone? This place seemed so big and empty. She still could not see any sign of life. 

Not wanting to sit there forever, she turned to her left, making the choice at random. But making the choice didn't dispel the butterflies in her stomach. Every step seemed only to make them a little worse, as she could sense no one around.

And then suddenly she did sense someone up ahead. She found her pace quickening, her stride lengthening until she was running. And soon enough she could see someone up ahead, although he was still far enough away that she had to strain to see who it was. Pale blonde hair. . . tall. . . All of a sudden, she knew who it was, and cold fear swept through her. Her knees locked, and she stumbled to a stop, backing up as fast as she could.

"Shit. . ." she breathed, getting up to run back the way she had come. "Knives!"

It had only been a second, but he had come so close that she could see the surprise in his eyes as he realized she knew who he was. That was the only warning she got before he tried to tear her apart with his mind. 

She more felt his surprise then saw it as his attack met the carefully constructed shunts that had been set up in her mind. She felt him stumble and slow and she sprinted away from him, cursing foully in her mind. Knives? The love of her life was supposed to be Knives? She felt her dreams turn to ashes and ran as fast as she could, back to where she had started. 

Knives attempted to stop her with his mind again, this time by blocking the corridor with a solid wall of air, but she forced her way through without even slowing. 

Knives Knives Knives her brain repeated as she ripped through every little mental trick he erected to stop her. She could feel his frustration building, and she panicked as she could sense him getting closer, running faster and faster as his frustration fueled him. 

She reached the corridor she had emerged from and barely slowed as she made the turn, careening off the far wall as she shot around the corner. All too soon she was back at the dead end, and no welcoming portal shimmered in the air as she approached. She started pounding on the wall, demanding that Dream Dancer take her back, that it was a mistake, that she didn't belong here, and not Knives, dammit! Feeling Knives coming close only increased the volume of her cries, but nothing she did garnered a response.

She didn't stop her harangue until she was forced to. Knives, having learned that nothing he tried to do mentally was stopping this strange female, tried the more direct approach. A swift slap to the side of the head and she was thrown into the wall, then slid down it to lie unconscious at his feet. 

Ignoring her for a moment, he ran his hand over the wall she had been pounding on, feeling the small dents from her fists but nothing more. He looked around cautiously, sniffing the air and listening for anything out of the ordinary. Aside from the breathing of the unconscious body at his feet, there was nothing. He shrugged, but mentally marked the corridor for further study.

Looking distastefully at the human body at his feet, he contemplated his dilemma for a moment. She was not small, for a human. Over five and a half feet, he judged from what he had seen while she was running away. Her brown hair was short, only a few inches long at its longest near the back, and it did nothing to hide the red mark from where he had hit her. She was dressed oddly, in pants of a strange blue fabric and a loose, long sleeved off-white shirt. And what had she been screaming, and to who? All in all, she was quite a puzzle.

If I kill her now, he thought, I may never know what is going on. He knew that he probably should, but his life had been boring lately. Here, at least, was a puzzle. While she was quite likely only crazy, the fact that she had not been stopped by his mind powers was worth a closer examination.

He lifted her limp body and threw it over his left shoulder, and walked back the way they had come. Upon reaching the main corridor he paused for a moment and looked to his right. 

If she had continued running that way, he thought, she would have made it out of the ship. He pondered that for a while, but shrugged. It was just another mystery to be solved when she wakes up.

He turned to the left and continued to take her to a safe place.

Knives deposited the woman in an empty room. He dropped her on the ground in an untidy pile, and stepped back. The red mark from his slap to the side of her face was beginning to fade already, which surprised him. He reached down and grabbed her chin, pivoting her face to look at it more closely. The woman whimpered as his fingers gripped near the bottom of the mark, but he ignored her. He decided it didn't look like there was going to be a bruise. A frown appeared briefly as he wondered about a blow that could knock her out and yet leave no mark. 

Abruptly he let her go and turned to leave. Her head thumped on the floor as he released his grip and she whimpered again. Knives turned off the lights as he stepped through the door. He locked it behind him and left.

His next destination was the monitor room. The ship was set up to monitor every inch of its interior and exterior. He would find where and when she entered, and figure out what she did to disable the entry alarms. Seating himself in a chair, he called up the records of the past day and looked through them for her entry.

An hour later he was still searching. He had gone back through the records of the past week and found no sign of entry. There was no possible way for her to have been in the ship longer, he knew. He would have had to have sensed her presence. But he still could find no means of entry. He had checked and rechecked every single breach in the hull, from doors to exhaust vents and found nothing. He even ran a check of structural integrity, but there had been no new holes added to the hull. 

Giving up on that part of the search, he switched to figuring out what she did once she had gotten in. Finding her this time was easier. He linked to the time that he first sensed her presence and checked the records. 

And there she was, caught on tape. He had almost hoped that she had found some way to keep the sensors from recording her image, but seeing her now made that unlikely. It would have provided an explanation for her ability to get into the ship, but no such luck. He rewound the tape in real time, starting from the moment she saw him.

After the first viewing he sat back for a moment to think. Then he started from the moment she saw him. 

She had been running, and then spoke. Whatever she had said was too quiet for the recorders to pick up, but the look of recognition that flashed across her face told him all he needed to know. Somehow, she knew him. How would one of these vermin know who he was? His brother had never been one to spread their story around widely, and he certainly never told random humans his name. Only his handpicked Gung Ho Guns ever knew, and they knew better than to gossip about him.

And she had been surprised to see him. Who else would she expect to see here? It was his ship. If she knew enough to know his name, one would assume that she would know that he lived in this ship. A puzzle.

He went back in time to the next puzzle. She had been walking along at a steady pace, when all of a sudden she broke into a run. There was no way for her to know that he was coming, but there was no other reason for her to begin to run. She actually began to run at the same time that he sensed her, which raised an interesting question. Could a human somehow have some sort of mind power similar to his own? He had never seen such a thing in all his years of watching the vermin, but it seemed the best answer to his question. Still, a very odd thing indeed.

He paused for a moment to watch her uncertainty as she left the corridor he cornered her in. It seemed she didn't know where she was, but that was the only entrance to the corridor. Surely she had seen it before. He shrugged, and continued.

He moved back to one of the more interesting moments of the tape. He stopped the tape five seconds before she appeared at the end of the maintenance corridor, and moved it forward at a frame by frame rate. At the time she appeared, he switched back and forth between the frames for some sort of discrepancy, something that might explain how one moment she was there and one moment she wasn't. There was nothing, no blurriness, no fading, nothing. The time stamps on the frames were correct. There was nothing to contradict the impression that she had just appeared out of thin air.

He was left with more questions then he had started with. He still didn't know how she had gotten in the ship, but it looked more now like she was not alone. Someone needed to be manipulating the records system. Who that someone was, and where, were his next questions. And the answers were not going to be found here.

He left and went back to the room he had locked her into, wary along his trip for more unexpected guests but he found no trace of anyone. He stopped for a moment, leaned against a wall, and rested his chin on his chest. He closed his eyes and sent his senses out into the desert, searching for any trace of vermin. There was nothing, which unsettled him even more. He opened his eyes and took a moment to collect himself before continuing to her cell.

He opened the door to her room, and was surprised to see her awake. She had turned the lights back on, and had seated herself on the bed. She was looking at him as he opened the door, a sensation he found unsettling.

"Hello, Knives," she said. "I bet you have a few questions."

Her head was propped against the wall, and her legs were drawn up on the bed, her arms loosely crossed atop her knees. She didn't move as she addressed him.

This wouldn't do.

The insolence of the vermin was annoying Knives. How dare she remain in such a casual posture in his presence? She should at least be showing some of the respect that was his due as a superior being. Standing to attention was the least she could do. Abject fear and groveling would not be amiss. But this? No movement at all, just a casual acknowledgement of his presence? This was entirely wrong; the whole situation was beginning to offend him.

He decided not to waste his time with niceties that would be lost on the vermin anyway. He reached out with his mind, preparing to rip the information he wanted out of her mind. He smiled grimly at her and was rewarded by seeing her blanche. All the vermin should fear him. He was their exterminator.

Then it was his turn to pale, although he felt anger instead of fear. As his metal touch got close to her mind it was stopped by a wall of--something. He could see it with his talent, now that he was close enough, and he could feel around it, but there seemed no way that he could get into it. Her mind lay tantalizingly close behind that strange barrier, and he could not figure out how to reach it. He grappled with the whatever-it-was, but could neither break it or get around it. He tried for a few minutes, but was unable to make any headway, either in breaking it or even figuring out how she had such a barrier in the first place. 

Frustration has never been kind to Knives, and in this case he responded no differently then he ever did. As his anger grew, so did the amount of power he threw at the problem, and in equal measure did his finesse decrease. In the end he threw all of his power behind one attempt to break through the barrier around her mind, but he still had no luck. The force of his blow was reflected around his target, dissipating harmlessly behind her.

Through the entire process she sat impassively. She knew what he was trying to do, but trusted that her mental defenses would be strong enough to withstand even his most determined assault. She could feel him trying to find some way into her mind, and every attack he made against her shield. The last attack almost overwhelmed the barrier, and she sat up a bit later as he finished it. The power that the plants possessed was much greater then her own, and she was afraid that her barriers would not be strong enough to keep him out of her mind. She stared at him impassively, waiting to see if the next attack would break through.

Knives glared at the female. This was not the way he had imagined this confrontation would go. He was exhausted already, and still she sat there, inscrutable and maddeningly quiet. Nothing he had done had made her change her expression in the least bit, and as he finished he watched her sit up straighter. He stood straight, betraying no signs of weariness and said nothing. What does she want, he wondered. In her eyes he imagined he saw contempt, and his anger grew even more. He watched her watch him, and the silence stretched between them for a second, then five, then ten.

Suddenly, with all the speed that a plant possess, he reached forward and snatched her off the bed, throwing her to the floor. Aside from the huff of breath that escaped her as she hit the floor she made no sound. Knives place one booted foot on her shoulder and stepped down, slowly applying more and more pressure, trying to make her cry out. At least her eyes were facing the floor, away from him. Although the pain in her gaze would have been gratifying, he didn't think he could stand it her eyes were still impassive.

The female did not comply with his wishes. What was wrong with her? Could she not feel pain? He could feel the bones grinding together and still she made no sound. He debated the benefits of crushing the bones of her shoulder beneath his toes, and found no good reason not to. Just as he began to apply more pressure to her shoulder, she pivoted beneath him, slipping her shoulder out from under his foot and somehow managing to kick him between his legs.

Knives found himself dropping to the floor, the agony radiating through his body overwhelming reason for an instant, and an instant was all it took for the female to scramble out the door. He made it to his knees before she managed to lock it, but it did him no good. He attacked the door, pounding on it with his fists and his mind, but he had exhausted himself earlier when he tried to break her mental barriers. He passed out before he even realized through his anger that he had depleted all of his energy.

The woman felt him pass out on the other side of the door, and she slumped to the ground in relief. Tears ran streaming down her face but dripped to the floor in silence. She had been well trained to make no sound when in pain, to steal even that satisfaction from the enemy. But no training could make the pain go away. She placed her good hand on the floor and pushed herself to her feet. Her knees were weak and threatened to give out on her. She convinced them that here was not a good place to pass out, and stumbled up the passageway, looking for some way out before Knives woke up and broke out of his temporary cell. She didn't know how much time she had, but was afraid that it was going to be less than she needed.

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She moved quickly through the halls of the ship, wandering but rarely having to retrace her steps. Her vision was unfocused, her mind evaluating data without much thought. This way, then this way, then this one, and she gradually got closer to where she really wanted to be. She was looking for a way out, but even more she was looking for supplies. Visions of Meryl and Millie reaching a town parched and praying for water urged her towards caution. The whole world was a desert, and didn't seem to be amicable towards human life. Preparation would save her life, assuming Knives left her alone long enough for the desert to try to win. Of course, he had no way of knowing that she didn't know how to live in a desert. After all, how could you be born on this planet and not?

She finally found her way into a room full of computers. She didn't know it was the monitor room Knives had used before visiting her, but she would have appreciated the irony. She spent a few minutes trying to figure out how the system worked, but thankfully it was easy to operate. As she booted up the system, she sent out a prayer for the souls of the designers who had tried to make the operating system idiot proof. She wouldn't qualify herself as an idiot, but it takes time to learn how to use a new OS, and she knew that she was time-poor. She knew that after driving herself to mental exhaustion it would take her at least twelve hours to regain consciousness, but she wasn't a plant. His recuperative powers were bound to greatly surpass hers.

She figured she had only six hours at best before Knives was awake and looking for blood. He didn't strike her as one to take defeat well. The look in his eyes as he threw her to the floor. . . it was enough to send chills down her spine, and it had been a long time since someone could do that to her. There was such a loss of sanity, an overwhelming loss of the mind to the emotions that she wondered how he had stayed functionally sane enough to plot his revenge. She felt a moments anger towards what had driven him to his insane rage, but put the emotion aside as a distraction she didn't need at the moment. She pulled up a schematic of the ship and pulled it to the side.

She wasn't here to psychoanalyze Knives, or empathize with his childhood. He wouldn't spare a moment's pity for her, and if she wanted to survive this game, she was going to have to play by his rules. Running from the ship wasn't going to be much of an escape. She didn't know the planet, she didn't know the people, and she didn't know where to go. She didn't have any money, she didn't have any supplies, and she didn't have any idea how to go about getting some. If she allowed herself to think of all the things she didn't have, she might get depressed. Then again, there had been times in her life when she had survived with less, but having lived through horror she wasn't thrilled with the idea of getting to repeat it.

She drummed her fingers impatiently by the monitor as she waited for it to finish a search. Caches of supplies were highlighted on her saved ship map, and she memorized the location of the most promising three that were on the way out of the ship. With any luck she could grab some food and water before heading out in the desert. Without luck, well, she would have to make her own. 

She paused, then smiled at a nicely-timed thought. She closed out the ship data section and pulled up a map of the local area surrounding the ship. She adjusted the scale until she could see a few of the closest towns to the ship. A moment was spent pondering the merits of each town, but it was a short moment. The closest town was over ten miles away. The next closest was about thirty-four, and after that was forty. Her fingertip touched lightly down on what was her only real choice, and she turned to leave the ship, powering down the computer and turning the rooms lights off. She started to jog through the corridors, feeling the time slipping away from her. She found food and a canteen at the first place she looked. The food bricks didn't look gourmet but the water was wet and the canteen didn't leak. It was enough to satisfy, and anything more would weigh her down too much. She piled some bars in a backpack, blessed whoever had made things so easy for her, and rushed out of the room. A few turns later she was back on the main corridor, and soon found her way out of the ship. 

The bright light of the sun reflected off of everything, the glare momentarily causing her to squint before her eyes adjusted. She took a quick minute to orient herself, then took off towards town at a lope. Her speed wasn't spectacular, but she could cover at least six miles every hour. Months of regular conditioning and a job that had called for peak physical fitness stood her in good stead now, as she faced the desert with a devil at her back. She knew she could keep this pace up for hours, and she just hoped she had them. It had taken her twenty-seven minutes to get out of the ship. With luck, she could disappear. Without luck, well, that she would handle when she had to.


	2. Preparing to leave town

Yay! Another review!! 

Oh, wait, the disclaimer. . . Idon'townTrigun.

I wasn't planning on writing more tonight, as my head is sleepy, and my eyes are complaining that open is bad, but I GOT A REVIEW!! (Ok, I know I'm getting just a little too excited here, I'm sorry, I'm sleep deprived.)

So, let's see if I can make this coherent. . . 

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Night fell, slowly creeping from the east, but the light of the moons was enough to continue to travel by. As the sun slipped over the horizon, the colors of the sky were painted in colors more vivid then any she had ever seen. She tried not to think much, but allowed the motions of her running to lull her into a state of meditation. Each stride brought with it a sense of peace, each motion brought a feeling of calm that she didn't wish to break. She could let her mind wander without having to worry about what she thought. With her emotions tied up in the motion across the desert she was free from their restrictions.

And who could blame her for trying to leave her emotions behind? If she tried to make sense out of the past day, every thought would lead itself to worry. Knives hunting her was not a happy thought. An insane, obsessive enemy with anger management problems following her could cause problems in her new life. She'd hate to have to try and fight him when he wasn't underestimating her. She had no illusions that she could manage his level of power. Of course, running away wasn't really the answer to the problem he posed, but it gave her some time to try to find one.

Along with an answer to Knives, she needed to figure out what she wanted to do now. She had no purpose here, no direction, no attachments. There was a great deal of peace in those thoughts. All that she had done, all that she had been in her past could not reach her here. All that could harm her from there was what she had brought with her; her fears, her training, herself. She didn't know if she was strong enough to overcome much of what had scarred her before, but she was grateful that she had been given a blank page in a new book on which to write her life. She had been given a chance, and the fighter in her drove her to try to win out over her past.

Her gratitude overflowed her heart, and she wished a prayer of thanks to Dream Dancer for giving her a chance to live where those who had hurt her before could never reach her again. Maybe this world wouldn't have been her first choice to live on, but it could have been worse. Now she only had to deal with what they had done to her, which wouldn't be easy, but it might be possible for her to happy someday, now.

She pulled one of the ration bars out of the bag and broke off a bite. Sticking it in her mouth, she absently tried to chew it, or at least worry a small piece off of a corner. It didn't even taste bad, which surprised her. It didn't taste good, but not tasting bad made it better then any other ration bad she had choked down before. She uncorked the canteen and took a swallow of water, holding it in her mouth to try to soften the bar. Ruminating is always easier when you have something to chew on.

But what to do now? The question nagged at her, intruding on her thoughts when she tried to think of ration bars and food. What was there on this world? She wracked her brain for answers but came up with little. Insurance agents, psychos, outlaws, sheriffs, water barons, bartenders, bounty hunters, bus drivers, café owners. . . Hmm. Nothing that appealed to her. Nothing she'd likely be good at, either. She didn't think her old skills would be much called for on this world, which made her glad.

She had received the impression that most of the towns were very close-knit, kin and friends and enemies living in the same place their entire lives. Strangers weren't likely to find a very warm reception when looking for work. Or if they were allowed to work, they wouldn't be easily allowed into a social circle, and without a group of people to care about what happened to her, she would be tempting prey for the type of person who likes to hurt others.

And she didn't want to live in a small town. Everyone knowing everything about every neighbor just wasn't for her. She didn't want to still be the new girl twenty years after settling down. She had lived without truly belonging to a community long enough.

She wasn't sure if a city would be a good idea, either. Knives had already shown he was capable of blowing up a city or two. Sure, it had been Vash who physically released the energy, but Knives had been pulling the strings. And if Vash could do something like that, it stood to reason his brother could as well. Looking up at the crater on the fifth moon, she wondered if she could bring herself to risk so many lives. Life was short and dangerous here already; she didn't need to add to its troubles.

She didn't even know if she wanted to settle down. This was a whole new world, just begging to be explored. Maybe it was pretty much all desert, but it was new to her. She didn't know how long it would take her to tire of seeing a new world, but she didn't want to settle before she was ready.

She finally finished the bite of bar, and decided that it was time to sleep. She spied a nice looking patch of rocks and stopped. She curled up in their shadow, punched the backpack until it resembled a pillow, and propped the canteen up against a rock by her head. She checked the seal of the cap, making sure it couldn't leak out when she slept. The aches of the run were commonplace to her, and she barely noticed them, but now that she had quit running her shoulder began to throb. Endorphins were the only pain reliever she had, and now that she was too tired to keep going they were wearing off. She gingerly felt at her shoulder, but didn't press the joint. It had loosened during her run, but was still swollen and painful to the touch. She grimaced, but as there wasn't anything she could do for it, she tried to ignore the throbbing. Preparations finished, she curled up on her side and fell asleep.

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Her estimation of how long it would take Knives to get out of the room was a bit off. Knives woke up fighting mad, and he continued to batter himself into insensibility as he tried to open the door. 

Finally, sense won out over anger. It was his fourth awakening before he thought about the problem before attacking the door. Knives, possessing an inhuman intelligence, was able to figure out that he would have better results if he tried to short out the lock. Moments later he pushed the door open and stepped out into the hallway, a crazed look filling his eyes. He glanced quickly to the right and the left, then turned to the left and went back to the monitor room. Twelve hours had passed since she had locked him in that room, but he didn't doubt his ability to find the girl and make her pay for what she had done to him.

He paused as he reached the entrance to the monitor room. He didn't remember turning off the lights. Cautiously he tried to sense if the woman was in the room. He didn't feel her, but who knew what she could do? She was impossible, and it was best to be cautious. He stepped aside from the door so his silhouette wouldn't be framed against the light. A slow hand crept in and flicked on the light. He whirled, ducking through the door in a crouch, and rolled to the far wall. Quick as thought he regained his feet and scanned the room.

Nothing. But she had been here.

Feeling slightly foolish, he approached the bank of monitors. He accessed the menu of entered commands and saw what she had looked for. A map of the ship seemed logical enough, but why did she need one of the area around the ship? Unless. . . He pulled up the map and manipulated the scale until it was where she had stopped it. He looked closely at the monitor and saw where her finger had rested. 

He felt smug. The little smudge was going to be that bitch's downfall. He knew where she was headed now, and would get there before she could leave. A momentary thought plagued him. She might have had some sort of vehicle hidden around, giving her greater mobility. On further reflection he dismissed the notion. Most likely, he would have found it when he was scanning the area earlier. Also, she would not likely have been stealing supplies if she had some form of transportation nearby. 

No, it was most likely she was on foot and heading towards the nearest town. He would go there tomorrow morning and drag her back here, where he could interrogate her at his leisure. Her little tricks would not work on him again. No human could hope to win against such a superior being. The sooner she realized that fighting him was hopeless he would break her, and learn just how she got in his ship, how she evaded his mind attacks, and just how she had managed to trap him in that damn room.

Satisfied, he left the record of what she had done on the computer and pulled up the video of what she had done once she left him unconscious. He watched her fumble with the system for only a minute or two, then move through the menus with ease. Her impatience was obvious, from the line of her shoulder to the tilt of her head, to the rhythm of fingers on the table to the speed with which she absorbed the data she brought up. He watched her pause, her body tensing for a moment and then relaxing, then saw her draw up the map of the surrounding area. 

It took her only a moment to place her finger on the closest town, and as soon as she had, she shut down the program and left the room. He watched her exit the ship, and run off towards the closest town. Satisfied, he restarted the video. Any clues to her behavior would make it easier for him in the end. He watched her fumble for a minute, learning the system, and watched her pull up a map of the ship.

Suddenly, he sat up straight in his chair and restarted the video. He watched her fumble with the computer system for a minute, and as she began to access the ship menu he paused the feed and sat back, deep in thought.

She hadn't known how to access the computer system. She learned quickly. These two facts did not go well together. There were few vermin on this planet who knew how to operate computers. Most of those were from the Last Ship, the one that had crashed when he had sent the Gung Ho Guns after Vash. The system on his ship was exactly the same, so none of them would have had any problem starting it. 

And no one else on this planet would know how to use a computer. The vermin were very technology poor; but for the monitors on the enslaved plants there were no computer systems. The vermin had mostly forgotten how to use even those, and in any case, they were also the same as the ones in his ship. Where did she learn to use and recognize a computer, and yet not know how the only computers on this planet operated?

Knives began to wonder if there was some strange conspiracy afoot, involving more then this one girl. If that were the case, he would need to find out their goals, and see if they were able to be co-opted to his plans as the Gung Ho Guns had been.

This was beginning to look even more interesting then before. He closed down the computer system, still looking at her face as it slowly faded from the monitor.

Soon, he thought. 

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She walked into town around noon. She had overslept a bit and had woken with the dawn, but the town before her seemed normal enough. There was none of the unnatural hush that she expected would have fallen over the town if Knives had arrived before her. A bit of tension eased itself from her shoulders, but enough remained for her to still feel uneasy. She had only figured out her next step that morning, and was unsure as to the feasibility of her plan.

As she walked through the dusty streets she noticed every glance that lingered on her, and she wondered why. Did she look that out of place here? She knew she was dressed oddly for the area, but her jeans and sweatshirt were not entirely out of place. Was it just because she was a stranger? Was it because of the direction from which she entered town? She had a strong suspicion that not much traffic came from the area of Knives' ship, but circling the town to enter from another direction wasn't much of an option, either. Someone might have spotted her creeping about and wondered why, or she might have to deal with people who should have seen her on the road, but hadn't.

So she strode in from the wrong side of town, her head held high, her stride betraying little of the weariness of her journey. And people looked, and wondered at the woman who walked so confidently, and wondered where she had come from, and why she was here. No one guessed at how worried she was, or how nervous. Her demeanor was cold and proper as she moved purposefully through the town, looking neither left nor right, not pausing or looking as if she were unfamiliar with the area. Her assured walk led some to believe they had seen her before, as she seemed to know exactly where she was going, and no stranger would be able to find their way about so confidently.

She, however, had no confidence in her ability to find what she was looking for. The section of town she had entered was full of homes and shops, but she was looking for an inn of some sort. She was trying to find some place where she could get both food and lodging for a night before heading out of town again. If she could just convince someone to let her work for room and board. . . 

She worried that she wasn't going to be able to find someplace that would hire her for a night. Her water was gone, and although she still had ration bars left, they weren't very filling, and for all they were nutritious, her stomach was pleading with her for something with just a little more presence to it.

The street she was on opened up to a square. In the middle was a fountain, and while she was thirsty, she passed it by. No one else was drinking from it, and she didn't want to draw attention to herself. Also, there was just the sort of place she was looking for on the other side. It was clean and tidy on the outside, which boded well for the sort of person who was running the inn.

She stepped in the door, automatically stepping to the side so she wouldn't be backlit while waiting for her eyes to adjust. What she saw gave her even more hope; the place was clean and tidy, and the current patrons seemed to be well-behaved. There were neither more nor fewer tables then the place could seat comfortably, and the floors were clean and freshly swept. The place smelled of alcohol and dust, but that wasn't so bad. The whole planet smelled of dust.

She walked up to the counter and set her backpack down by her leg.

"I'm wondering if you might have some work for the night," she asked the man behind the bar.

He looked up from the books he was balancing, saw her, and looked more closely.

"What sort of work are you looking for?" he asked.

"The type that comes with food and a bed as payment. I'm not picky." She stared him in the eye, not challenging, but honest.

"Can you tend bar?" he asked, not warming to her, but not turning her away yet, either.

"Depends on what you need. I know how to mix most drinks, and I can pour a pint without spilling the head," she said.

"Tell me how you make a Bolero," he said.

"1 1/2 oz Light Rum, 3/4 oz Apple Brandy, 1/4 tsp Sweet Vermouth, and Ice," she shot back without a pause.

"Good." He smiled, and extended his hand. She took it, and he said, "I need some time to look these over." He indicated the books on the bar with his right hand. "Something just isn't adding quite up, and I need more time to go over them then I get each night. You take the bar, and I'll give you lunch, dinner, and a room, if I have one, which I probably will. A pretty little thing like you shouldn't have too much trouble with the men, but if any give you too much of a hard time, call for Geoff, the cook. He's in the kitchen, behind that door over there," and he pointed over her right shoulder, "he'll make sure none of them do anything to you."

He was shaking her hand all through his little speech. She smiled at his enthusiasm, and her good fortune, and said, "If I need him, I'll call."

"Good. Can you start right now? I'll send Geoff out with your lunch; you can get to know him." At her nod he waved her behind the counter and left towards the kitchen. She watched the door close behind him, then picked up her backpack and ducked under the counter. She took off her canteen and shoved both into a corner. She looked at her dusty hands and grimaced, looked around, and spied a sink. She found a wet towel that had already been used to wipe down the bar and wiped most of the dirt off her hands. She rinsed it in the sink, then wiped down her face and neck, enjoying the coolness against her skin. 

Still thirsty, she picked a glass off of one of the shelves, then froze as she saw her reflection in the mirror behind. Her left hand came slowly up and traced a line down the side of her face. She watched her reflection do the same, but it seemed so unreal. Unwilling to be seen staring at herself, she tore her eyes away, but her mind stayed on what she had seen.

She was missing a scar. She wanted to turn back and lose herself in her reflection, but her fear of acting abnormal kept her at the sink. She could still vividly remember the pain of how she received the scar, the terror of that night, and the reactions she received from people when they saw it. It had come to be a part of how she defined herself, and it was gone. Dream Dancer must have taken it from her. 

Not that she mourned its loss, but it was just another reminder of how far she was from all she had known.

She realized that she was still standing in front of the sink, and had yet to fill the glass with water. Blushing faintly at her inattention, she quickly rectified the situation and drank. She held the last mouthful, swishing it around on her tongue, and marveled at how quickly it disappeared into the parched tissues of her cheeks. She set the glass down and turned, ready to do her job.

Not that there was much work for her to do. There were only six people in the room, two groups of threes. She stood, wondering at her good fortune. Something didn't seem right. Maybe she was just being overly suspicious, but things that seemed to good to be true usually were.

It was only a few minutes before Geoff came out of the kitchen with her lunch, and she used them to figure out just where things were. The beer was to her left, the harder alcohol was on the shelves behind her, and the prices for the drinks were posted on the wall above the sink. The cashbox was near her backpack, and seeing this, she nudged her stuff a bit farther away. She didn't want to make the owner nervous. 

She wondered why he had decided to trust her with the money. People didn't trust complete strangers with their cash, at least not in her experience. Maybe she looked a bit more trustworthy without her scar, but she didn't think that was the reason. She had been expecting to be put to work fixing the roof or something along those lines, not tending the bar. Things not going as she expected made her uneasy.

She didn't get to brood long enough to figure out an answer before Geoff interrupted her thoughts.

"Here's your lunch, missy," he called out as he entered the room.

She looked over and smiled. He was a big man, heavily muscled, but with a layer of fat that suggested he ate more of his cooking then he should. His short hair was grizzled, and his face was lined with character. His eyes twinkled as he set her lunch down before her, and the accompanying grin showed straight white teeth. If anyone deserved to be liked on sight, he did. Despite her reservations about what was going on, she wanted to like him.

She smiled back, but wasted no time picking up the fork and testing the food.

"Mmm," she responded, attacking the plate. It didn't take long for most of the food to be gone, but Geoff stayed to watch her eat.

"It does a man good to see his food appreciated," he said when she looked up at him inquiringly. 

"Oh, it is. This is some of the best I've eaten," she said after swallowing. She put the fork down and looked him in the eye. "My compliments to the cook."

"The cook appreciates the compliments. You look like it's been a while since you've seen food," he mused.

"I've seen food," she replied, "but it's been nowhere as good as this. I really got lucky, finding a job here."

"Sure did. But John's a good guy. Seeing a gal like you, looking a little down on her luck, well, he needed a day off anyway."

"I'm glad I could help him out; he seems like a nice enough guy. A little enthusiastic, but nice."

"That's him, right enough." He paused, and she resumed eating what remained on the plate.

"What brings you here? Looks like you've had a bit of a journey," he asked, casually.

She stopped, the fork caught halfway between the plate and her mouth. "A gentleman would not pry into a lady's affairs, and a wise man wouldn't ask about things that don't concern him. Are you a fool or a cad?" she responded coolly. 

"No, no," he said, his hands pushing away the question, trying to placate her. "I won't ask, I won't. You just look like someone's been pushing you around, is all. Thought maybe we could help."

"I appreciate that, I do," she said, trying to put a little warmth in her voice. There was no reason to suspect him of anything, but she'd seen too much to believe in innocent questions. It really was probably nothing more then concern on his part, she reasoned to herself. "If I thought you could help, I might take you up on that, but I'm afraid all I need from you is some food and a bed." She realized how cold that sounded, but didn't want to try to explain herself. The less he knew the better, and she didn't even want to try to edit her story into something he might believe.

"If you come up with anything we can do, just let us know, ok? The boss and I, well, we just don't like to see a pretty gal in such a heap of trouble, you know?" He smiled at her, trying to catch her eye.

She pushed away the finished plate and he picked it up. Looking him in the eye, she said, "If I think of anything, I'll let you know." And if she could think of anything, anything she needed that he might give her, that wouldn't end up getting him killed if Knives found out, well, she would ask. But it didn't seem like she'd be thinking of anything soon.

He nodded, winked at her, and went back to the kitchen. Left alone again, she started to brood, picking up where she had left off. Her instincts were nagging her, telling her that she needed to look more closely at her surroundings. Something wasn't right in this inn. Her gaze moved across the room, carefully looking at everything. 

The two groups of people were seated on either side of the room, but both were well back from the door. The tables were laid out so it would be difficult for anyone to rush the people at the tables. Carefully, she examined the men out of the corner of her eye. The group to her left seemed to be gambling, but the play was subdued, and the chips were still evenly distributed between the players. The group to her right appeared to be deep into a discussion of some deep philosophical impact, but the hand of the one farthest from the door kept creeping towards his gun, touching it, and darting away.

After seeing that, she saw that all of them had their guns near to hand. They were waiting for trouble, she knew it. She frowned quickly, more of a ripple across her brow then a tensing of her lips. What was going on here?

A shadow fell across the doorway, and her eyes went instantly to the door. Another group of three men came in, and one headed to the bar while the other two sat off to the right. She saw the exchanged glances and nods, and interpreted them as the man walked her way.

Hi.

Hi.

Who is she?

Dunno.

Trust?

Don't. 

She wondered just what it was she had gotten in to now. Wasn't her life interesting enough? 

"Howdy, miss," the man said.

She stifled a giggle. Howdy? "What can I do for you?" she asked.

"Three beers, please," he said.

"That will be $$7, please," she replied. He put the money on the counter as she filled the mugs.

"Here you go," she said, smiling, as she handed him the beer and picked up the money.

"Thank you, ma'am." He turned and left, and she noted that no one at his table sat with their backs to the door, either. She ducked to put the money in the cash box, and so missed the entrance of the man they had been waiting for.

It didn't take her long to figure out she was missing something important. She had no more than lifted the top of the cashbox when she heard a shout from the direction of the table that the new men had sat at. She dropped the money and peeked her head over the counter.

Some oddly dressed man in gray had entered and was aiming at the man who had shouted. As she watched, he shot him. The man flew back from the impact and hit the wall six feet behind him. Peripherally, she saw the men at the other tables knock them over and take aim. 

She'd seen enough. She dropped to her knees behind the counter, her mind moving through options at great speed. She couldn't see anything at hand to use as a weapon, or at least not one that would do much good. The glasses were all on the shelves behind the bar. She didn't want to be seen reaching for a weapon; the bar would be scant protection if a shot came her way. She knew there was nothing in her bag, there was nothing under the sink. . . Her eyes darted about the small area she found herself in, looking, looking. . . 

There. A spool of twine, obviously intended to wrap parcels for the post lay to the left of her knee. She quickly measured off two lengths, broke them off, and tied a slip knot on one end of each. While her hands were occupied with this task, she listened to the firefight in front of her.

She heard a shot come from the group of philosophical drinkers, and it was met with another from the strange man who had entered and started this mess. She heard a cry of pain that proceeded to become a wail. Next came two shots from the gamblers, and another shot from the stranger. No one cried out, and as her fingers finished the knots she wondered if everyone in this stupid inn was a horrible shot. 

She rose from behind the bar, swinging the twine lasso-style, and as her eyes focused on the man before her, she assessed her chances of success, judged them good enough, and threw. She wouldn't have given her improvised plan more then one chance in three of success, but as she relaxed into the throw she knew it would work. The man wasn't looking her direction, having dismissed her as not a threat, if he had realized she was there at all. His back was turned towards her as he was beginning to aim at the man he had shot near the door. His gun was almost perpendicular, and a grin pulled itself back from her teeth as she saw victory.

The first loop of twine settled nicely around the barrel of the gun, and a quick yank tore it out of his unsuspecting hand. He didn't have time to react before the second loop was settling around his neck, and after she tugged that one tight as well he had better things to complain about. His hands reached up to his neck, but as soon as she had tugged the loop tight around his neck she was vaulting over the counter. She passed by the gun, launching herself instead at the man as he tried to get his fingers under the twine while turning her way. 

He didn't have time to prepare for her attack. She tackled him to the floor, making sure that he hit his head hard on the floor. While he was dazed, she hit him again, once on the temple to knock him out, and twice in the body because she was pissed. She heard a noise at the door and flipped on her back, reaching for his gun behind her. Almost as soon as her fingers closed around the butt she had it aimed between her knees at the noise. She stayed in that position, knees inches from the floor, feet to either side of her, her back elevated only six inches from the floor, both hands gripping the gun and aimed at a shadow until she saw hands reaching for the air. 

She shifted the gun to one hand and quickly scrambled to her feet, not taking her eyes off the shadow. She motioned for him to get out of the light, and as he complied she saw that it was Geoff, the cook. Only now he had on a nice, bright, shiny star and seemed to be the sheriff. Figured.

Noise rushed in as she took in her new surroundings. She saw the tables that had been thrown about the room in a futile effort to provide some sort of cover. She saw the holes that had been punched in the adobe walls. There were more of them then she thought there would be. She didn't remember that many shots being fired, her eyes counting the holes. Seventeen, and she could only remember nine. Finally she saw the men who had been shot, the screams of one assailing her ears, the whimpers of one drowned out by the other man but still evident on his face, and the final man who did nothing at all.

Damn. She hated it when people died. 

She clicked on the safety and tucked the butt of the gun into the waistband of her jeans. She loosened the twine from the outlaw's neck before he suffocated, then used it to tie him up. Satisfied that he wasn't going anywhere, she got up and moved over to the man who was screaming. His friends were trying to staunch the flow of blood from his shoulder, but they weren't having much luck. The pulsing of the blood meant that an artery had been nicked, and it was only a matter of minutes until he bled out. Unless she helped.

"Move," she said, suiting actions to words as she pushed one of his friends out of the way. She opened her mind and looked at the wound. There, there was the biggest problem. The artery hadn't been nicked, it had lost a whole chunk. She plunged her fingers into the wound, ignoring the howls of the wounded man, and manipulated the ends of the artery until they met. She encouraged them to grow, and was welcomed by the sensation of the ends becoming one whole under her fingertips. Once that was done, she carefully moved her fingers away and checked the rest of the wound. 

It looked like it would heal without her help. As long as it didn't get infected, that is, but there wasn't much she could do about that. The man finally passed out right before her hand exited his wound. The dirty looks his friends were giving her changed to ones of incredulity when they saw that he was no longer in danger of bleeding out. She continued to ignore them, and absently wiped her hand on the floor before getting up and going to the other wounded man. 

He wasn't as grievously hurt, but a bullet had entered his left arm and not come back out. She took a corner of his vest and wiped down her hand, then put her fingers in the wound. He screamed, but she didn't let that bother her. She moved the fragments of the bullet to her fingertips and pulled them out, one by one until there were none left. Satisfied, she absently patted the man on the right shoulder and stood up. She turned to get a drink of water, and bumped into Geoff.

Her eyes found his, and there was little left in them that was friendly. His previously warm brown eyes were now dark as coal, but she met them calmly.

"Who the hell are you, and just what the hell are you doing?" he asked, his voice cold and dead.

"I'm Kiley, and I'm just doing what needed to be done," she replied, pushing past him.

He tried to grab her shoulder, but she slipped out of his grasp. She lightly vaulted over the counter again, and he was forced to either clamber over it after her or go down to the other end where most people entered. He chose to keep his dignity, and she had a chance to get her glass of water. Her bloody fingerprints caught her eye as she set the glass down on the bar, but she didn't have time to linger over their meaning. Geoff had reached her, and forcefully pushed her into a corner.

Kiley pushed back. The strength in her body surprised Geoff. He was used to people being a bit more cowed when he started threatening them. This strange woman was not behaving in any way he understood. He quelled the urge to push back, realizing that it wasn't a good idea, but his anger at this female was pushed up another notch.

"Just who the hell do you think you are?" he growled at her.

She looked at him, saying nothing. He got the feeling that she was keeping quiet just to see how well he could hold his temper. He stared at her, watching her face. It gave away little. There was weariness there, and sadness. It wasn't what he had been expecting.

Meeting her eyes, looking at them instead of trying to stare her into submission, he saw something he didn't expect. There was actually grief lurking in the depths of her gaze, and as he saw it there he calmed himself.

Kiley waited until the sheriff was in a mood to listen to what she had to say. "I think I'm the person who saved the lives of the men in this room. That's who I am. And if you think I'm going to listen to someone yell at me for doing that, you are mistaken." Her voice was calm, level, as if she hadn't just disarmed a man with a $$50,000 bounty on his head with packing twine, and then stuck her hands in the bodies of the men the outlaw had shot. Her voice was calm like she had done this sort of thing before.

He thought on what he had seen, and about the person he saw before him, and wondered just where she had come from, and where she had learned to do what she just did. He had thought she was working with the outlaw, checking out the inn before the man came in to kill John. That's why he had sent in a few more boys, to make sure that there were enough people on hand to cover the situation if she had started trouble. 

He had been so sure she was one of the bad guys. Staring at herself in the mirror was a sure sign of a guilty conscience, he had thought. The faint bruise on her cheek and the way she was favoring her shoulder had him wondering if she had been "persuaded" to go along with the plan, which was why he had offered to help. When she had indicated that she was in trouble too deep for him to help, he had been positive she was working for the Grey Man.

Then she took him down, stopped Lem from dying from blood loss, and somehow pulled the shrapnel from Danny's wound. He wondered what trouble was so bad a girl like this would be running from it. No wonder she hadn't accepted his help; it wasn't that she didn't need it, but what he could provide was nothing she couldn't already do on her own.

Kiley had just watched Geoff's face as he came to his conclusions. When he looked at her again, she gave a small sigh of relief. The sheriff had come to all the right conclusions, and it looked like she wasn't going to get into even more trouble. Which was good, because she didn't need everyone on this planet chasing after her. 

"So now that you realize I'm not the bad guy here, what are you going to do?" she asked him.

"Me?" he said, surprised. "Lady, you're the one who bagged herself $$50,000 worth of bounty; it's me who's wondering what you'll be doing with it!"

Kiley blinked. The man had a bounty on his head? Now the whole attempt at trapping the outlaw made sense. These men had wanted the money. She had saved their lives, but had taken the windfall away. Now some of the resentful glances she had seen made sense.

"I don't have the time to wait for the money," she said. At Geoff's shocked look her mouth quirked and she continued. "Why don't you give me some of what you have on you, and when the bounty comes in you can keep it."

"We don't have anywhere near that sort of money in this town," he protested. "I don't think we could even get $$2000 scraped together."

"That's enough for me," she said. "Any more, and I'd just have trouble carrying it around."


	3. Early morning thoughts

Insert standard disclaimer here + sincerity = don't sue.

Knives. . . Oh, yeah. He'll show up again, someday. I think. ^_~

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It took Geoff almost a half an hour to get John out of the closet he had hidden himself in. Despite the fact that the shooting had stopped, and that using himself for bait had been his idea in the first place, now that the day had come his cowardice was showing. He had been fine until the arrival of the strange woman had given him a perfect chance to run away, and then his courage obviously had fled. No amount of coaxing or explaining served to expedite his exit from between boots and coats; Geoff finally had to drag him out by the collar. 

As soon as he was pulled from the closet and was wrenched to his feet, John pulled himself together. He brushed off the sheriff's hands and straightened his coat. You could see color come back into his face, the flushed red of embarrassment replacing the pale white of fear. The blush passed, but his color remained high as he gruffly said, "Let's go see what mess she's made of my inn."

Somewhat surprised, but mostly relieved that he no longer had to deal with the sniveling pile of flesh that had inhabited the closet, Geoff followed. They didn't speak while going down the stairs; Geoff had already told him all that had happened in his absence, and John seemed preoccupied. 

As John opened the door to the main room he stopped. Geoff cringed, remembering what he had seen: the bloodstains on the floor and walls, the upended tables and chairs, the bullet holes in the walls. He craned his neck to see what the room looked like now.

He hadn't expected much. The tables and chairs he expected to see righted, but not in their correct places. He certainly hadn't expected to see the holes in the walls almost repaired already. One of John's boys was finishing up patching a cluster near the door, but those were the last. Both the floor and the walls had been scrubbed clean. You could only tell where the blood had been because it was actually cleaner there then elsewhere. Kiley was directing the men who had stayed behind. They watched her as the last touches were finished up, the last pieces of a broken chair swept up, and the last words of encouragement and direction were given.

She was gifted, that was certain. These men who knew nothing of her, and weren't even talking to her a few moments ago, yet now were following her every command. Except she didn't seem to command, or ask, or even cajole the work out of them. She just saw that something needed to be done, and either whispered it in the ear of a man who had just finished some other task, or did it herself. And the mess that he thought would have taken days to get picked up was already gone. Already the room had lost the smell of death and blood. 

They listened to her thank the men for what they had done, and watched the men tip their hats in acknowledgement before they filed out into the street. Dirty rags went into a bucket, and she walked back in their direction.

"So, John. Did I earn my keep for the night, or do you still want me to run the bar?" she asked, pausing in her journey to replace the bucket in the kitchen. 

"Ah, eh, um. . ." sputtered John. Then, "Yes."

She nodded. "Good. I have a couple things I need to take care of, but I should be back before it gets too late tonight." She walked past them, then paused and turned to ask, "Is there anyplace I can put my stuff?"

John nodded, then added, "Let me get you a key."

She nodded in acknowledgement, then finished her task of cleaning out the dirty bucket and tossing the rags. By the time she returned to the main room to collect her things John was waiting with the key.

"Thank you," he said upon seeing her. "I suppose I should have said that earlier, but I'm afraid you didn't catch me at my best today. Thank you, for saving my life, and for what you did to the room. It looks wonderful."

She half-smiled at him, an expression that reached her lips but not her eyes. "Most people aren't at their best after being involved in violence. You're welcome, and I'm glad I was here to help." It almost sounded like she meant it, but there was an undertone of bitterness that she couldn't quite mask. 

She did mean it; she was glad she could help these poor fools out. She just wished she could somehow have avoided the situation altogether, or maybe just have never had it happen. She was tired of violence, tired of seeing it, tired of being a part of it, and tired of always having to save poor innocent fools from it.

John tried to make small talk as he showed her to her room, but she was too depressed to join in. He gave up as he reached the door to her room, and gave her the key with a smile and another outburst of thanks. She just smiled, a real one this time that even touched her eyes, nodded, and took the key from him. He left, and she entered the room.

It was a pretty room, with yellow gingham curtains that fluttered in the breeze and matched the bedspread. The rug on the floor was white and yellow, flecked with a blue that matched the sky outside the window perfectly. There was water in a basin by the door, clear and still cold. She set her bag down on the rug by the bed, and filled the canteen from the bowl. 

She sat down on the bed and pulled the gun from the waist of her jeans. She looked at it, peered down the front sight, and opened the chamber. She dumped out the bullets onto her lap and sorted the spent casings from the live shells. She reloaded the gun, spun the chamber, and looked down the sight again. Sighing, she got up and walked out to the back of the inn.

For all that the inn was on the main square, it backed almost right up against one of the bluffs that surrounded the town. She found a few empty bottles from the trash and set them up by the foot of the bluff. She paced off about ten yards, took aim, and fired. Four shots rang out so quickly that the retort sounded like one shot. Four bottles shattered, shards of glass glinting in the sun. Satisfied, she lowered the gun and ejected the spent cartridges. 

John came running out the door, panic writ large on his face. When he saw what she had done, he stopped, rolled his eyes, and went back in without saying a word. She glanced at his retreating back guiltily. She should have known that would startle him. Shrugging of the sensation, she clicked on the safety and walked around the building and into the square. 

Now which way was the jail? She shaded her eyes with her left hand, not because the sun was in them, but because it was something to do while she tried to remember which way the deputies had turned when they were taking the outlaw away. Left, or right, which was it? It. . . was. . . left. Yes, left.

The gun was now cool enough to put in her back pocket without accidentally burning herself, and she didn't want to walk around town with a gun in her hands. She stowed it, then walked to the left. She hoped that there was some sign outside the jail, or she could be searching for a while. As she walked down the street, she saw shops and homes. None of them seemed to be very prosperous. There weren't many people in the shops or on the street. Granted, she didn't know the area's normal traffic patterns, but the town seemed eerily deserted for it's size. 

She only had to wander ten blocks before she found the jail. There wasn't a sign, but the bars on the windows was a firm clue that she was close. She crossed the street and walked up the few steps to front door. Not sure of the correct entrance etiquette, she knocked on the door and waited for a response. She didn't have to wait long before one of the men she had saved earlier opened the door for her. It wasn't the hurt one or the one who had bought the beer; it obviously wasn't one who had many manners.

"I'm here to see the prisoner," she said as the door opened. The man merely grunted, but she took it as both acknowledgement and admission. She pushed past him and he made no move to stop her, but also didn't do anything to help. His behavior unsettled her. She didn't know what impulse had driven her to the jail in the first place. Her involvement in this whole fiasco could be over now, but here she was, prolonging the agony. 

Unsure, she did what she always did when she was unsure. She pushed ahead, and hoped that she wasn't getting herself into trouble. She walked past the cluttered desks and the listing rows of file cabinets. A open door beckoned her. She could hear curses and muttered imprecations flying through the air, and she knew who was incarcerated behind that door.

She paused as she stepped past the door. There in a cell was the man she had taken down, the man she had stopped from killing a whole bunch of people, the man who had provided her with this lovely gun. And she pulled the lovely gun from her back pocket and aimed it at his head.

The cursing stopped as the man looked at her.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you," she asked.

His stream of invective started again, detailing her ancestry and purported sexual habits.

She clicked off the safety. The small noise seemed to echo in the enclosed space, growing louder as it silenced the oddly dressed man before her.

"No one is going to give a damn if I kill you. They would actually prefer you dead. Now give me one reason why I should not fire." Her eyes chilled to a degree that ice would find warm, and the man before her knew fear, knew death in a way he had forgotten years ago. He knew fear, and she knew that he did, and was satisfied.

She put the gun up and put the safety on again. "Thanks for the gun," she said, as she turned and walked out of the holding pen. 

She leaned up against a wall in the front office and closed her eyes. Drama, bah. She should be over that. She shouldn't need to see fear in the eyes of the helpless to make herself feel better. But she did feel a bit more in control, of herself and her situation, and she hated that it took seeing someone else fearing her to help her center herself. 

Love and peace. Guess they were just dreams, she thought to herself. She opened her eyes and saw Geoff. 

"Nice bit of acting, there," he said.

"It wasn't acting," she said. "I'd have blown a hole in his head if he'd not shut up."

He seemed taken aback by the matter of fact way she said it. She herself didn't really like the part of her that could kill so easily, but denying it was a fruitless exercise. She waited there, as it seemed like there was something more Geoff wanted to say.

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something as well, but finally started. "I suppose you're here about the bounty."

She kept her surprise from her face. Bounty? He had said something about a bounty, but was she supposed to get it? She supposed that she was the one who had taken him down, but what was she going to do with a bounty?

"It will take us a few days to get it from December. John said you're welcome to stay at his inn, free of charge, while we wait for it to get here," he continued as she stayed silent.

"That won't do," she said finally. 

If she stayed here that long, Knives were certainly find her, if he wasn't on her trail already. 

"I'm sorry," he said, and he did sound apologetic. "But we just don't have that sort of money here."

"I'll take what you have, and you can keep the balance," she said.

He was taken aback by that. "But we couldn't get you more then $$6,000! That's no where near--"

She cut him off. "That's enough. I'm leaving tomorrow; I'll need the money by then." She could see him calculating what he would do with the difference, but she cut him off. "Split the remainder between John and his boys, and your man who got shot. That's fair. I didn't come here to steal a bounty from this town, and I don't need it. You have some men who are hurt, and some men who need the money, and while they won't end up with as much as they planned, well, it should still help some."

Geoff just looked at her incredulously, his mouth hanging open. No one walked away from $$44,000. But this Kiley seemed ready to. 

She started to leave, but turned before she reached the door. "Is there any way I could get some of it before tomorrow? I need to purchase some supplies, and it's best if I get an early start tomorrow morning."

"S-sure," he stammered. He pulled out his wallet and fanned the bills, making a quick count. "Will $$300 help?" 

She stepped back the take the money from his hand and nodded. "It should; I don't need much," she said, and then she left.

Right there Geoff changed his mind. That crazy lady could leave whenever she wanted if she was leaving $$44,000. 

On her way back to the inn Kiley bought a leather holster for the gun and a few boxes of ammunition. It was not cheap, but she still had over $$200 when she left. She fingered the cash, then walked into another store. This one she left with only $$90, but she had better boots and a shirt that didn't stand out as much. It was a nice dusty-tan, just about the shade of the sand blowing outside. The sleeves were full, but fell short of getting in the way of her hands. The bodice was tight enough that she would be in trouble if she started to put on too much weight, but she didn't anticipate that happening. It was long enough to flare over the waist of her jeans, and the neck came up almost to her chin. A long zipper split the back, making it easy to get into. She also bought more underwear and socks, useful items that she hadn't had time to look for on Knives' ship. A last impulse had her grabbing a brightly colored blanket. It looked warm, and the pattern of blues and greens was calming. Plus, she liked it and had the money. Impulse buying is like that.

She had wanted another pair of pants but was dissatisfied with what the store had. She was tired of shopping and she liked her jeans. She just hoped she wasn't going to get too dirty before she could find another pair of pants that she actually liked.

The suns were beginning to set as she wandered into the main room of the inn. There were quite a few people in there, most of them looking at the clean spots on the floor and walls, or running their fingers over the patched bullet holes. John was telling his version of the story, which made no mention of the fact he was in a closet. But when he saw her, he gestured grandly and announced that, "Here is the woman who saved my life!"

Everyone turned to stare, and Kiley stopped, startled by the sudden attention. She blushed, and tried to make her way to the stairs. People blocked her path, clamoring for details, for the story of how the Grey Man was finally taken down. She pushed then aside, muttering excuses, saying she was tired, saying anything to try to get them to let her pass.

Finally she made it to the stairs and she was unable to keep herself from running up them. Reaching her room she tore the door open and ducked inside, even though no one had followed her.

So much for slipping through town unnoticed. No good deed goes unpunished; she knew that well. She drew a glass through the now tepid water and drank it down in one quick gulp. Then she moistened a hand towel and washed off her face. Then she wiped down her hands and wrists, and then her neck. The water felt good on her skin; it helped center her, remind her of where her body ended. She sighed, then took off her shirt and washed, dipping the towel in the water, wringing it out, then wiping it over her body, cleaning off the sweat of two very hard days and a long run through the desert. That done, she dressed in new clothes and old pants, slipped into the holster, and set the gun on the table. The rest of her belongings she packed in her stolen knapsack, a task of not even a minute. 

My new life, she thought, looking at the bag. Then she looked at the gun. Meet my old life, she thought as she picked up the gun and slipped it in the holster. She ran her fingers through her hair, then left the privacy of her room to brave the chaos below for her promised dinner. She walked into the hall and locked the door behind her, then made her way to the stairs.

The first person to see her as she walked down into the main room started to clap. Before her foot had even reached the floor the entire room was giving her a standing ovation. Embarrassed, and not at all sure how to react, she gave a shy little half wave before taking a place at an empty table.

It didn't remain empty for long. Somehow Geoff appeared before she had even sat down; he held her chair for her then claimed the one at her right hand. His best friend, the man whose life she had saved sat next to him, and the man who had bought the beer from her sat on her left. He winked at her as he sat down, and all she could do was stare blankly at him. 

She wasn't stupid enough to believe that all of this was because she had saved John's life. But the amount of joy that she was leaving the lion's share of the bounty in the town surprised her. Everyone here was excited and happy and ready to party. She had a feeling she wouldn't stay the focal point of the celebration for much longer; a few more drinks and some of these folks would forget just why they were so happy. 

John brought out a huge platter of food and set it in front of them all. "To my heroes," he proclaimed, setting out a plate in front of each of them. The men waited for her to serve herself first, which she did, a little self-consciously. 

"We thought we would save you from your throng of admirers and gossip-seekers," started Geoff, slipping her a wad of bills. She stuffed it in her pocket without counting, and Geoff mouthed, "It's all there." She nodded and started to pick at the food on her plate.

"Thank you," Kiley said before stuffing a bite of something green and tangy into her mouth.

"Think nothing of it; you saved us earlier today," said Geoff's best friend. "My name's Kyle, by the way."

"And I'm Josh," chimed in the man to her left.

"Well, Kyle, Josh," she said, "I'm happy to have been able to help." She was surprised to find no bitterness in her voice as she said it; perhaps the food was helping her temper.

She ate a few more bites and listened to the men as they traded small talk. They didn't exclude her, but she was comfortable not being a part of the conversation. After working the edge off her hunger she sat back and waited for a time to change the course of the conversation. She didn't have long to wait.

"Guys, I need to tell you something," she said into a pause. "Geoff, this relates to that trouble I was telling you about earlier." She had their full attention now.

"There will be a man following me. I don't know how long it will be before he finds me; it may be minutes, or it may be days. He will be coming to this town, and he will be looking for me.

"He may ask you if you've seen me, if you know me, if you know what I did when I was here, if you know where I went. You need to tell him the truth. Under no circumstances are you to lie, at all, in any way, not a little lie, not a big lie, none. Be nice, be polite, and tell him everything he wants to know."

They looked a little confused. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile as she continued. "That man is the most lethal man on this planet, and I happened to piss him off. There is nothing he's not going to do to find me and make me pay."

"Is it--Vash the Stampede?" whispered Josh.

Kiley snorted. "This man makes Vash the Stampede look like a big, harmless goofball. No, this is not a man you piss off. Don't do it, not for me, not because you want to prove you aren't scared of him, not to see if you can, whatever reason you might think of for lying to him: don't. I'm not worth your life, it's not worth your life, lying to him will be the last thing you do in this life. Just be polite and send him after me."

"What are you going to do when he catches you?" asked Kyle.

"Well, that's one of those points I'm not too sure on, but I'm sure I'll figure out something," she said. The men just stared at her. "What? I'll figure something out, I'm sure of it. You just do what I say, and he probably won't hurt you."

"Probably?" asked Geoff, his face twisted with the question.

"Almost certainly," she clarified. "Just be good." With that she pushed back from the table and left for her room, leaving the party behind. With any luck the boys would heed her warning. Without luck. . . well, they were old enough to make their own mistakes.

*************************************************************************

Knives had woken up that morning certain that the recapture of that annoying female was imminent. The morning had dawned bright, the suns rising slowly into a cloudless sky, but Knives paid no heed. For one thing, he was in the ship, well away from anything that might give him visuals clues to the world outside. For another, all the mornings he had ever seen dawned bright and cloudless; the world had no oceans, no large bodies of water to evaporate and form clouds. So what someone unused to the world might call beautiful, Knives would merely have shrugged off as usual. That is, if he had seen it at all.

But he hadn't. Instead, he awoke to the normal comforts of his room, meager as they might be. He didn't wish to clutter his living area with the paraphernalia of humans, so there was no art on the walls or knick-knacks on a table. He would have placed some art of his own on the walls, if that didn't smack of hubris. Nothing he had ever done had struck him as worthy of any sort of display. So his room was left sterile, devoid of what humans might call character or personality, but it was the way he preferred it. Clean; clean and uninfested.

The linens on the bed were a plain cream. The sheets were high-quality, as anything less would chafe most uncomfortably on the super sensitive skin of a plant, but he picked them as much for their lack of pattern or adornment as he did for comfort. It irked him that he had to rely on items made by vermin for comfort, and he wished to have as little around to remind him of them as possible. Colors seemed to him to be synonymous with the chaos that surrounded and defined the lives of the parasites, so he divested himself and everything around him of color. The walls of his room were adorned in shades of metallic grays and light reflective patches of white. 

He immersed himself in neutral tones of earth browns and creams, and dressed solely in blacks and grays in an effort to set himself visibly apart from the masses of vermin that were beginning to overrun this planet. He had hoped, when the ships were crashing to the ground, that the plague of humanity would end. When a few scattered survivors crawled forth from the ruins of the ships, he hoped that they would be the last gasp of a dying breed. When they started to build towns in the bones of their ruined hopes, their starry dreams come crashing down to dust, he had wished that the hulks above them would rob them of spirit and they would die, would fade away into the nothingness that beckoned them.

When they started another generation, and then another, he began to worry that the humans weren't going to die. When it grew harder and harder to roam the surface of the planet without running into an explorer of some sort or another, he began to despair. And in his despair, he started to take care of the problem, one vermin at a time. He had hoped that his brother, of all people, being the only other real person, that his brother would join him in his crusade to rid the universe of these awful parasites. But in the end his brother had betrayed him, wishing instead for some unreachable dream of peace for all, of conquering death with love. A foolish dream for a fool.

Knives shook his head, chasing away these maudlin thoughts of his brother. His brother had no place in today's agenda. He was merely chasing down an intruder, an interesting vermin. He needed to know how she managed to avoid his mental attacks; no one had, not even Vash. If the humans had somehow developed a way to circumvent the powers of the plants then Vash's and his lives were imperiled. They could not be allowed to take away the only advantage he and his brother had for the coming war.

And his brother was foolish if he believed that the humans wouldn't try to kill them. Some day, they would be found as different, as something odd and terrible, and the humans would destroy them, as they had destroyed so much in the years of their existence. Any thing that threatened them was either killed or tamed. He knew he would never be tamed to the needs of mere humans; the very thought made him ill. So it was death, either theirs or his. He knew which was better; it was only Vash who persisted in believing that there could ever be peace if the humans lived. Humans didn't even know what peace was, with their striving for things they could never have.

But that day, that war, was still in the future. Today he needed to find that woman, that strange, maddening woman. He dressed without haste, without worry, but he did take his black gun. Slipping it into his holster, its familiar weight was a comfort that brought a smile to his lips, but not his eyes. His eyes stayed cold, focused on that face he ached to see in front of him again. Those humans, that woman, they had no chance against him. Whatever she had done to him yesterday, it was not going to happen again. 

He was going to win.

Finished with his preparations, he walked calmly through the corridors of the ship, strolling the familiar passageways with the assurance of someone who has lived in the same place for a hundred years. The same, featureless, unchanging place. Which was just the way he liked it. Stability was important, more important then the short-lived humans realized in their striving and fighting amongst themselves for crumbs.

He didn't worry about taking food or water, instead walking out the door of the ship at the same pace that had taken him through his halls. He knew how long it would take him to get to the closest town and back, even with an unconscious female slung over one shoulder. If the whole process took him even five hours, he would be most surprised.

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Granny Annie was sitting on the porch when the strange young man walked into town. Not that there was anything strange about finding Granny Annie on the porch; it seemed to the folks in town that she lived there. Any time, day or night, if you looked outside you could see her on the porch, sitting, knitting, and watching the world go by. Her house was only a humble backdrop, a prop that served only to hold up the porch. She lived on that porch, lived watching the lives of her neighbors, watching them do things her body had denied her for years. But no one wanted to talk to her about her aches and pains, no not that old woman. No one wanted to hear what it was like to get old, to know that the body is truly weak no matter how strong the mind still is. 

And Granny Annie was still a very sharp old lady. The soft smile on her face could not hide the razor sharp intelligence that lurked in the depths of her eyes. That, as much as her tendency to dwell over-long on the infirmities of old age, kept her from being a favorite of her neighbors. She saw much, and the parts she didn't see she didn't even need to guess at. She just _knew_, the annoying old biddy.

When the strange young man walked into town, she was the first to see him. Instantly curious, she watched him walk past, his stride confident and measured. There was a look in his eyes of sublime confidence, of assured conquest. She looked at him curiously, wondering what he was looking for in this little town. Why, the last thing of any consequence that had happened was when Jake's little girl had wandered off into the desert and been lost for six and a half hours. And that, that had been a good six weeks ago. Or was it six weeks and a few days now? Time wasn't as clear as it used to be to the old gal, but she managed to keep the important things straight.

So why was he here? While he was out of sight she pondered why he might be here, but for all her intelligence she could not come up with one reason why someone like him would want to visit the town. If he had a pack, he might have been a peddler, or if he had a herd of beasties, why he might have been a drover moving the meat into the city. 

She snorted. And if he had the stars in his hand, he might have been a god, she thought to herself sardonically. While playing the game of what if might be fun, it got her no farther in her quest to puzzle out the meaning of his arrival. 

She didn't think he was a vagabond. For one thing, he was too well dressed and clean to be one of those drifters from the sands. His clothes had not seen enough wear for him to be one of their breed. For another, his steps as he walked past her were too purposeful for a wanderer. No, he had a reason to be here, a reason to be walking these streets.

A reason. . . He must be looking for something. She examined the idea as it formed in her mind, looking at it from many angles, studied the facets and deemed it good. Yes, he must be looking for something, but by the name of all that's holy, what? What could there be in this town that anyone would look for?

The second time he walked by his stride was longer, his face was cloudier, and his determination even more evident. Whatever he was looking for, he wasn't finding it. But what might he want here?

There was nothing in this town. A history of hard luck had driven off or killed most of the people who had originally settled here, and those who had remained had not thrived. It was a hard land, bordered by a land of misfortune to the south, a land that no one went to after no one came back. Those who were left spent most of their time digging a living, digging life out of the sands. The rest of the time was spent with family and friends, small pleasures and small home crafts to brighten dusty lives. There was nothing in the town to set it apart from a hundred others like it, nothing at all.

Unless. . . he was looking for something that wasn't originally in the town. Maybe something had been stolen, something he was hunting. But even so, there was nothing new in the town, nothing that hadn't been there for years. If there was any object with a value great enough to send someone searching for it, whoever owned it had hidden its existence from her. She snorted at the thought. Hidden? From her? Impossible.

So, if he was searching, and not for an item, then he must be looking for a person. Well, she knew that there had been no travelers through the area for months, and no one had stayed longer then overnight for years. He was looking in the wrong place, she decided. Whoever he was looking for had either gotten themselves very lost (and she spared a moment to hope that if they had, they hadn't gotten lost to the _south_) or had managed to escape from this man.

And when he walked by again, everything clicked. The expression on his face was so incredibly frustrated she knew it had to do with a woman. She could not keep herself from calling out in glee, "She's not here!"

Instantly, he was by her side, looming over her, exuding menace. The gun she had not seen as he walked by before suddenly took on a presence that was greater then its physical size could account for. Her throat gone unaccountably dry, she tried to swallow under that implacable gaze but had little success.

"Where is she?" he asked, each word dragged out of his throat like sticks through gravel. 

"I, I don't know," she stammered. 

"Which way did she go?" he asked, almost patiently.

"I don't know," she repeated.

"When did she leave?" he asked with no patience at all.

"I, she never was here," she said.

Two hands slammed to each side of her shoulders, sliding her and her chair until it hit the back of the porch, and the grating noise of the dragged legs seemed to come from very far away. 

"Then how did you know I was looking for a woman?" he asked, his icy voice reflecting the color of his eyes as they bored into hers.

"I guessed, I just guessed," she sobbed, losing all pretense at being unafraid. "There's no one here, there's been no one here for months. I just guessed, that's all, I just guessed, I just guessed." Her words dissolved into sobs, still trying to protest that she didn't know what was going on.

He pushed himself back, leaving the woman sobbing on the porch. 

Knives stomped back onto the poor excuse for a what passed for a street in the misbegotten town. As he walked back the way he had come, he ran an angry hand through his hair. That sniveling old lady hadn't been lying to him. She had seen that woman. Nor had any of the other people he had asked. 

She had tricked him.

*******************************************************************************

Knives wasn't in a happy mood when he finally returned to the ship. He wasn't as mad when he arrived as he was when he had left the town; the walk had done much to clear his head. He was mostly mad at himself for allowing her to trick him. She seemed to know exactly how to make him think what she wanted him to think, and that angered him. He was allowing himself to be manipulated by a simple human.

Or maybe that was his problem. He was so used to thinking of the humans as a simple waste of space that he was unused to thinking of them as crafty beings. He had underestimated her, and it was his own fault. He had surrounded himself with people who were, for all intents and purposes, simple minded. Or perhaps single-minded was a better definition for their patterns of thought. Old Chapel wasn't a stupid man, but his notions of honor made him easy to predict and manipulate.

He hadn't been thinking, and that was how she had managed to trick him. He had been responding, to her appearance and to her disappearance, but he hadn't taken the time to figure out the nature of her simple-mindedness. If he could figure that out, there was no way she could escape. As soon as he could figure out how she thought, he could find her. And when he did, then, she would answer for what she had done. 

The first step was finding her trail, though. And to do that, he had two options. He could strike out blindly, moving from town to town until he found where she had been. Or he could study her, the recording of her in the ship and predict where she would go after she left. While either method would work both would take precious time, and the thought of her getting farther and farther away thinking that she had bested him made his teeth hurt. No vermin should be allowed to get away with such an affront. The way his luck was going, she was probably bragging about it right now. His mind helpfully provided him with a detailed mental picture. In it she was being toasted by a throng of admirers, their beady eyes gleaming as they listened with avarice to her story of bearding the evil Knives in his den and escaping unscathed. He could see the smirk on her face as she told every detail of kneeing him in the balls and locking him in the cage he had prepared for her.

He shook his head to dissolve the image and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. No. That wasn't what she was doing. He couldn't see that, not of her. She was too. . . contained for that; she wouldn't be the type of person to boast. Boasters needed someone else's opinion to bolster their sense of self-worth, and he didn't get the feeling that she was a person who valued the opinion of just anyone. There was a calmness, a sturdiness to her that didn't need to brag.

He reached the monitor room and entered, turning on the lights and taking off his gun belt. He slung it on the back of the chair near his favorite monitor. He looked at the smudge on the screen, the smudge he had not cleaned off in his smug assumption that it was her downfall. He had wanted to see it, to have its presence reaffirm her stupidity in the face of his brilliance. Now, it mocked him. He rubbed it away with his cuff and sighed. His pride was his biggest downfall, he knew that. And still it tripped him up.

He propped his elbows on the monitor and cradled his head in his hands. Another image popped into his head, just as detailed as the first and much harder to dispel. In this one, she was again telling her story of besting him, but this time it was to a crowd, a crowd that stretched to the limits of his imagination, a crowd aching to destroy him. 

"Yes, you just have to knee me in the balls," he said to the empty room in answer to what he imagined she was saying. "I'll fold. The tough part is going to be getting that close." This one he could see. She had the feeling of someone who was used to reporting to a higher authority. His fears of a shadow conspiracy grew as he dwelled on the image. Getting rid of the vermin would be a problem if they knew they were fighting a war, and it would be even harder if they had some clue how to fight. 

And who to fight. None of these fools were going to touch his brother. He would make sure of that. The shadow conspiracy grew in his mind, taking root. Somewhere out there, someone or a some group was planning how to kill him and his brother. Humans and their petty fears, their inability to understand anything that was different from them, always willing to see threats in everything.

He would be their threat, if they wanted one. If they had wanted to eradicate the plants they shouldn't have tipped their hand; they shouldn't have let him know they were out there. He wasn't going to underestimate them again. He wasn't going to underestimate her again. He would find her, capture her, and wring the answers out of her. There wouldn't be anything left of her after that, but who cared about the fate of one vermin? It was much more important that he and Vash live, that their superior race survive then the fools that sprawled across the planet. Their lives were more important.

He opened his eyes and accessed the woman's records. He studied them intently, gauging every flicker of her eyes, every fidget, every flinch. He saw where he was surprised and where she wasn't, and he contrasted that with what he knew of the humans. And then he got frustrated.

Whoever had trained this woman had trained her well. She gave nothing away, nothing she didn't wish him to know. Every time she might have come close to spilling a secret her face grew blank and still. She withdrew into a place inside herself that screened her thoughts, never allowing one to reach the surface of her body. He saw it at the time she first saw him, when she writhed on the floor while he crushed her shoulder and a short time later while she collected herself in the hall after he passed out. He saw it while she was in the monitor room. She knew her every action was being recorded and her acted accordingly. And strangely enough, he saw it again when she paused at the door to the ship before passing outside.

What linked these moments? Surprise, pain, recovery, deception, and exit? What made her draw down inside herself to find that well of stillness? Was she just the sort of person who would not let themselves show any sort of emotion? That didn't seem to be the case. He had seen her despair as she pounded the wall at the end of the corridor.

Abruptly he got up and walked to where he had captured her. What was so special about this place? He held his hands up, feeling the air currents, drawing upon an inner stillness of his own that he might better evaluate the outside. There was nothing out of place here. He would have been able to sense it. Opening his eyes he began running his fingers over the walls, paying special attention to the area she had dented in her poundings. There was nothing, no secret door leading to a passageway or anything else that might explain how she had arrived. This place held her secret tightly and would not give it away. 

Shaking his head he turned and went back to the monitor room. He watched the tapes of her again but could gather no more clues. There was something there, he knew it, but he could not make the connection. What was it that made her draw back into herself? What linked these situations?

Then a thought began to form in the back of his mind. Heedless of the impatience his frustration tried to impose on him, he waited, letting it mature in its own time. All of these times were linked by feelings, yes, but above all they were linked by a feeling of--uncertainty? He tested the idea and found it worthy. She hadn't expected to see him, didn't know how to stop him, wasn't sure she had captured him, didn't know--how to escape, maybe?--and didn't know. . . 

Didn't know what? Why did she pause before entering the desert? What could she not have known? She had looked at a map. On his walk back from the town she had sent him to, he had wondered at his stupidity in thinking that she had actually needed a map, but now he revisited that thought. 

He pulled up the video of her looking at the map. He had originally discarded that footage as worthless, due to its being only a diversion, but he looked at it again. He watched her eyes, watched them look over the entire map, saw how the only place they lingered on was the closest town, but she looked over the entire map, her eyes flicking from point to point. If it had only been a diversion, why would she have needed to look at the whole map?

He laughed, a quick sound that echoed in the mostly empty room. Why did anyone look at a map? To find themselves, of course. But how could she not know where she was? She paused at the door because she was uncertain about what lay on the other side. 

Knives knew that this was the truth, knew it in his bones. But it raised the question: how did she get in his ship without knowing where she was? 

An interesting conundrum, he mused. Then he picked up his gun and went off to his room to pack. If she didn't know where she was going, he wasn't going to find anymore clues here. It looked like he was going to have to find her the hard way.


	4. How to stop a plant intent on murder

Written with no intent of profit, and no intent to harm anyone's copyright.

Who is Kiley? Who is Kiley? Sheesh, guys, do you think I'm going to make this _easy_?

*********************************************************************

Kiley entered the latest random town on her journey and sighed when she saw the crowd. So far she hadn't made it through one town without having to save someone from something, and the crowd before her didn't bode well for her chances of making it through this one unscathed. 

The last town she had been in, she had managed to save three small girls from a house fire. The time before that, it had been rescuing a man who had been dared to climb a nearby cliff, and then froze in fear when he was halfway from anywhere. Then there was that stampede that had threatened a family on the road, which wasn't properly in a town, but a couple miles out. There hadn't been any more outlaws, but she had rescued a young wife and her child from an enraged and well-armed, drunken sot of a husband. She put the fear of god into him; it wasn't likely he'd be drinking again. 

The incidents blurred in her mind as she tried to recall them. She was tired, tired of running and tired of saving people, over and over and over again. Couldn't any of these folks save themselves? Unfortunately the answer seemed to be a resounding no. She wasn't used to being surrounded by people without her sort of special skills. Her little tricks made it possible for her to reach people that others couldn't, and her training had left her with the experience that few of these town folk seemed to have. 

She sighed, pausing a few blocks away from the group to give her time to find her resolve. She could do this, whatever it was. And it was likely that no one else on this planet could. In all good conscience, she couldn't walk away and leave whoever was hurt or missing, or in trouble, or whatever it was now to their own devices. It wasn't right. She tried to tell her tired body that, tried to convince her sore muscles that continuing on was the right thing to do, and after a minor struggle she managed to start moving forward again. 

She reached the crowd and asked a grizzled old fellow to her left what the problem was.

"There's no problem, missy," he said shooting her a glance that lasted long enough to be a stare. "We just found water, that's all. Down there in those caves," he said, making a vague gesture towards the front of the crowd, "we have found an actual stream of running water. There's enough there for everyone in town, and then some."

"Oh." He turned at her lackluster response and frowned.

"Sorry," she responded with a smile. "I'm a little tired from my journey, that's all. Do you know if there's an inn about? A place I can get some sleep?"

He pointed to her right and said, "It's about three blocks in that direction."

She nodded her thanks and turned to go, relieved that, for once, it appeared she hadn't arrived just in time for trouble. She arrived at the inn and registered for the night. She ordered a meal, dined, and retired to her much anticipated period of slumber. 

The moons danced through the sky, and the revelry around the mouth to the cave abated as people sought their beds. Suddenly, a cry rose up, a mother's voice piercing the quiet night with panic.

"My son, Rogel! Has anyone seen Rogel? Roooogel? Where are you?" Her cries echoed through the streets, calling back the people who had left and waking those who had already sought their beds.

Kiley was one of those. The cry sank through her unconsciousness, echoing through her dreams and pulling her out of sleep. The distress of the mother radiated towards her and only grew as others joined her search with no results. 

Kiley sighed and sat up, rubbing her eyes in the hope that it would make her feel more awake. It didn't. So much for this being a quiet town, she thought as she threw back the covers and started to dress. The wails took on a greater note of distress as she was pulling on her boots. Grabbing her gun, she tied the holster around her as she hurried to the scene of turmoil.

What greeted her was a sight of chaos. People scurried here and there in a frenzied jumble like ants after the hill has been crushed, but unlike ants there was no purpose to their movements. After a quick survey of the scene she grabbed the arm of the man nearest to her and asked what the problem was.

"It's Rogel. He's gone missing, and were afraid that he's gone in the caves," replied the man before shaking her off. Nodding to herself she walked up to the knot of people that had surrounded the hysterical woman. She listened to her sob as those around her tried to offer comfort. Her husband held her in his arms as she suffered through the loss of her child.

Bloody good way to waste time, Kiley thought. She shouldn't have the breakdown until after the child is safe. A child of maybe eleven years stood nearby but excluded from the group of people surrounding his parents. He stared at them, and at those giving comfort while he was ignored. A wry smile twisted Kiley's mouth as she walked towards him and squatted back on her heels, lowering her head to his level.

"What's the problem," she asked him calmly.

"My, my brother's gone. We can't find him. Mama told him not to go in the caves, but we can't find him out of the caves and there's no other places to look anymore." The words tripped out almost faster then his tongue could supply them, blurring together in his haste to tell someone, anyone, even this stranger what was wrong. 

Kiley put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. "I'll find him," she told the boy. "SAR. It's my job." At the boy's blank look she smiled and rose. "In the caves, right? I'll get him out."

He stared after her as she walked towards the mouth of the caves. A couple men at the entrance tried to bar her way.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but you can't go in there," said the men positioned to the left of the entrance.

Kiley didn't waste words on the man. Instead she crossed her arms and gave him a piercing look.

"Why not?" she asked quietly, injecting menace into her voice. She was tired more then she was pissed, but the sooner this kid was found the sooner she could go back to bed. Sleep beckoned, and she wanted to follow.

The man had the grace to look uncomfortable. "It's very easy to get lost down there. There are lots of corridors and shafts leading in all sorts of directions. It's a bloody maze. Sounds echo all around, and the rushing water roars the closer you get to it, covering all other sounds and adding to the disorientation. We're getting some of the men who know the cave to try to find him; we just have to wait for them to get to town."

She nodded, and asked "How long is that supposed to take?"

The other man replied, "It should only be another few hours." 

She rolled her eyes. "A couple of hours is a very long time," she said as she started to push past them. They tried to stop her but couldn't seem to grab her to slow her down. "I can do a little spelunking in the interim, maybe save your boys some trouble," she shot back over her shoulder. 

A couple of hours, she fumed as she wandered through the cave. Do those fools know how much trouble a child can get into in that amount of time? The cave twisted and turned around, moving back upon itself and generally tried to be as confusing as possible. She walked with one hand stretched before her, feeling for any obstacles that might bloody her face. After she deemed enough time had passed, she stopped for a moment and listened. She could hear the water coming form somewhere in front of her, and intermittently she could hear a wail. She smiled grimly, a picture of determination lost in the dark, then concentrated for a moment. In front of her face a patch of air began to glow, faintly at first but growing brighter as she waited. 

When she was done she had a torch without the wood, a flame suspended in midair, merrily consuming oxygen without a catalyst. When it was bright enough for her she resumed her journey, the ball of fire leading her way a pace ahead. 

Finding the child wasn't difficult for her. While the strange twisty nature of the cave distorted the sounds of his cries, making them seem eerily close or far away within a few steps, she didn't need to follow them. His mind was bright with panic before her, and all she needed to do was find the right combination of paths to reach him.

It took her almost two hours, two hours of wandering and doubling back on her trail when she reached a terminus to a promising path, but she finally found him. She doused her light as soon as she saw him. The picture that remained with her was one of a grubby little boy, maybe six years old, face streaked with tears and dust looking at her hopefully. When the light went out he started to cry again, but he wasn't able to choke out the first sob before he was in her arms. 

She felt little fingers grasp her arms with a grip that was going to leave little finger-shaped bruises. She held him as he sobbed into her chest, giving him comfort as best she could. He was explaining that he had only wanted to see the water, but his words were lost in hiccups.

"Shh, shh, it's ok. I'm here, you're safe, it's alright," she whispered in his ear, words of reassurance and comfort. Slowly his tears eased, and he fell asleep in her arms. Satisfied that he was going to sleep soundly she summoned her light again and made her way back out of the cave.

Upon nearing the entrance to the cave, she paused to douse her light again and to listen to what was going on outside. She heard nothing, and surmised that most of the people who had been running about earlier had returned to bed. They were probably still waiting for those cave experts, she surmised.

She exited the cave amid no fanfare. The two men who had been guarding the entrance had left, as well as almost all the members of the town. The only people she saw were the family of the boy she held in her arms. All three of them sat together now, giving each other what comfort they could. 

The father was the first to see her. She watched the light of hope enter his eyes as he saw his son in her arms, watched as he nudged his wife. Her tired eyes lit up as well and she scrambled to her feet, rushing towards Kiley.

"Rogel," she whispered in a voice gone hoarse from too much crying. She tore her son from Kiley's arms, waking him in the process. They both started to cry again, sobbing against each other as the other two family members arrived. The son wormed his way into his mother's embrace but the father paused long enough to shake her hand.

"Thank you," he said simply. Words seemed to have deserted him, but he collected himself with a visible effort and continued. "I don't think we can repay you for your kindness," he started.

Kiley cut him off with a wave of her hand. "SAR, sir. It's not a job; it's a vocation," she said, and then she pushed past him, leaving him to stare blankly after her.

Bed, she thought. Bed. Bed, bed, bed, sleep. Sleep.

She turned to the left and walked a few steps before feeling something eerie behind her. Turning quickly, she saw a tall, slender figure staring at her from a few blocks away. Her heart stopped for a beat as she saw the eyes of the man, the eyes glowing blue with an inhuman glow that rose from their depths.

"Shit," she breathed.

*******************************************************************************

Knives started to walk towards Kiley while she considered her options. Running seemed out of the question now. Attacking would be suicide, and she wasn't that desperate yet. Throwing herself at his feet and groveling for mercy was an option, but she it wasn't one that stayed in her mind long enough to be discarded. She would not grovel for anything, not even her life. Throwing herself at him, and smothering him with kisses lasted long enough to jumpstart her sense of humor. She was unable to come up with a decent course of action, so she might as well make her final thoughts amusing ones. Starting a musical dance number in the street might work, but she seemed to be missing a few cast members. Throwing herself to the ground and flopping around like a fish offended her sense of dignity, but she might try acting like a cat, twining around his ankles and purring. Or, maybe not. Her eye caught the gun riding at Knives' hip and decided that she should probably try to not get too close.

Unable to arrive at a safe option, she decided to just stand her ground. Since she couldn't come up with any life saving actions, she would just have to depend on her reactions. She adjusted her stance, shifting her weight to a shooting stance but keeping her hands away from her gun. She wiped her hands on her shirt, getting rid of the dust and sweat that would harm her grip if she needed to reach her weapon. She folded her arms across her chest, tucking her hands into the crooks of her elbows. Her chin came up as she threw her shoulders back, and she projected attitude as she waited for him to make the first move.

First rule of life, she thought. Don't panic. Second rule of life, fake it as long as you can. Both rules seemed to apply to the situation at hand.

Knives watched her assume her posture of defiance. It amused him, but didn't stop him, or even slow his advance. He continued his slow stalk until he was close enough to loom over her. He could smell her fear, a tantalizing perfume, but one that was too faint. She feared him, but not enough. He watched as she shifted her face a little, to better look him in the eye, but waited in vain for a display of fear as she did nothing more. He looked down at her, knowing that his eyes were glowing and knowing that its effect was disconcerting to the vermin. He wanted to see fear in her eyes, wanted to know that she respected the power he had over her. This vermin needed to learn respect, needed to learn her place in the world. She needed to learn that she had no power over her own life.

She didn't give him what he wanted. Her gaze didn't shift, even as her pupils contracted from looking at the light. Her eyes gave nothing away, nothing that he could use on her as a lever, nothing to manipulate her with. Even her mind was calm, calm like the sky in morning, calm like she hadn't a care in the world. 

What was wrong with the woman? Didn't she know how overmatched she was? Didn't she realize he could kill her with a thought? No one had looked at him without fear since Rem, and even she had been a little wary of him. Even Vash was careful around him, worried that the wrong move or gesture might set him off, might make him explode into a frenzy of death. But not this female. Why? What did she know that gave her so much confidence?

And now what was he supposed to do?

Well, the vermin had been walking away from that group by the mouth of a cave. Maybe she cared about their fates. Her actions of the past few weeks showed that she cared about strangers; maybe she would care about the lives of these.

He broke eye-contact and looked behind her, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. "Hostages," he said, lingering lovingly over every syllable.

That got him a reaction, but not the reaction he wanted. Her eyes lost their openness, lost the calm look he had been unable to understand. What replaced that look was not the fear he desired, but an icy anger that made her eyes hard. Coldness settled over every feature, moving outwards from the eyes. The lips thinned and grew set. He knew now that what he had seen before was a posture of waiting, of waiting for him to make a move, and now that he had she was reacting. Unsure as to what she was doing he continued to stare, but his eyes lost their glow as his anger faded into puzzlement.

She stepped back a pace and straightened her posture, lowering her chin and squaring off her shoulders. Her arms were lowered to her sides and held tightly against her thighs. She looked to have planted herself on the ground. Knives watched implacably, waiting for a response that made any sort of sense. She slowly raised her left arm until it was parallel to the ground with the palm held facing the sky. Her eyes didn't leave his as she slowly closed her fingers over her palm as if she were closing them over strings suspended in midair. Then, with one quick motion she jerked her hand forward and twisted her hand so the palm was facing the ground, and then she opened it, like she was letting go of whatever she had grabbed.

Behind her the family fell to the ground.

They didn't move, not to get up, not to breathe. Their hearts had ceased to beat, their minds to function. She had killed them.

Knives couldn't keep the surprise from his face. This was not what he had expected.

"No hostages," she said with a cold smile. 

********************************************************************************

Knives looked at the fallen bodies. They lay in an undignified sprawl, limbs tangled around each other, the arms of the mother still mostly wrapped around her too-still son. The moons drifted shadows over the still forms, making them look like some arcane sculpture out of a malignant nightmare. They were very obviously not alive, and the nature of their death had granted them no dignity. He could see nothing wrong with the bodies, nothing that would account for the sudden death. A quick examination of their physiology didn't give him any clues, either.

He exhausted his options of examination from this distance. His mind pondered the evidence before him, trying to figure out the means of death, but coming up with nothing. Then he looked at Kiley, her cold, cold eyes and malevolent stare. He could see anger written in every line of her body, a serious anger that promised pain. His assumption that there was nothing this woman could do to him was eroded by the look in her eyes. It didn't make him afraid; instead it fascinated him. One of the vermin might actually be a threat. How. . . interesting. 

"How amazing," he said, wonder in his voice. "How did you manage to do that?" He started to walk towards the bodies, but Kiley shifted her weight and blocked his way. He shot her an irritated glare that slid off her like water on glass. He raised on hand to cuff her aside, but she said something that made him pause.

"If you persist in threatening me, you're never going to know," she said in a frosty tone. Looking at her Knives sensed something that didn't belong on this hot planet. She was too cold for this place of heat and sands. She was elemental ice, the coldness of a frozen land, of the deepness of space unlit by any stars. There was nothing in her of this land, nothing at all. It was as if she was an alien, something that had been exiled to this place so foreign to her core nature.

Knives looked down at her, nonplussed. What was this woman? His questions, which had sent him on this quest in the first place, multiplied tenfold. She seemed to know so much, so many things she could not possibly have knowledge of. She did things that were impossible for a human to do, and yet she did them. She was a puzzle, an enigma, a riddle that he couldn't solve. And she obviously knew how to do things that he had never even dreamed existed, like this instant death thing. If he could learn that, the vermin would fall before him like leaves in a typhoon. 

How marvelous.

Silence stretched between them as Knives thought. He weighed torturing the information out of her against asking for it. While he didn't like the thought of supplicating a vermin for anything, the look in her eyes and the tricks she had already pulled left him worried that torture might not be successful. It was always easier to manipulate but she was succeeding in making it impossible for him to understand her well enough for that tactic. Plus, she had said if he persisted in threatening her she wouldn't teach him. Perhaps, all he had to do was ask.

"I'll let you live if you teach me these tricks of yours," he said finally. Besides, if asking didn't work, torture could come later. 

She nodded. "That's what I hoped for," she said with a crooked little smile, the ice melting out of her eyes. It almost wasn't a threat, and it was about what she had wanted to come out of this confrontation. Knives would no longer be chasing her, at least. What remained to be seen was whether she could survive teaching him a trick or two.

Her left arm rose again and reversed the motions she had made before, grabbing the strings she had released, twisting them, and releasing them again, palm ending up facing the sky. The light of the moons glistened off her palm as the people behind her gasped with the resumption of life. Energy poured out of her, and it was all she could do to keep from passing out in the middle of the street.

"First object lesson: stasis field," she said as she turned. He glanced after her but looked as the family collected itself from the ground. They were disoriented and had trouble coordinating limbs to work in concert, but these symptoms passed quickly. They shot a terrified glance at Knives and ran stumbling to his left.

Shaking his head at the marvel of it all, he turned to the right and followed the woman to the inn. A stasis field? Whatever was that? She had managed to surprise him again. He was sure that they were dead. Perhaps this girl wasn't as cold as she tried to play. That would make it easier for him; he didn't mind killing creatures that got in his way. If she did, well, hostages might work in the future. It was something to keep in mind.

She tensed as she heard him behind her, but said nothing. He followed her into her room and watched as she crawled into bed. Almost instantly she was asleep. She hadn't even paused to take her boots off.

Knives looked at her, wondering at what sort of creature she might be. Her face didn't relax in sleep, but her brain waves had calmed to the point that he knew she was not faking to avoid unnecessary questions. Her body was exhausted, her energy was depleted. Whatever that stasis field was, the working of it obviously took much out of her. Interesting.

Settling himself on the floor, Knives pushed aside the clothes that Kiley had left there in her haste to answer the call of the distressed woman earlier. He prepared to fall asleep, settling his head on interlaced fingers held behind his head. He thought that tomorrow should be fascinating.


	5. The end of the first story

Please, no suits. I'm not that snappy a dresser.

Two chapters in one day? I must love you guys.

*************************************************************************

Kiley woke up at her usual time, about an hour before dawn. Her mind struggled to rise out of sleep, and it took her a moment to remember why she was so exhausted. Her mind was trying to protect her, to keep the events of the last night away from conscious thought, but it was defeated by her need to know what had happened. It twisted and turned the paths of rationality away from the events of the past night, but it couldn't save her from herself. A few minutes of muzzy thought later she recalled just why she felt so crappy this morning.

That woke her up quickly. Oh, god, how could she have been so stupid? She berated herself unmercifully, knowing that she had ignored the risks last night, knowing that she would not have been the one to pay for any mistakes she might have made. One stasis field would normally be enough to knock her out, and she had tried four? Her mind quailed at the temerity of it. The stasis field had to be one of the hardest things she had learned, and although she had used it before she had never tried it on more then one person at a time, and never without a great deal more time for preparation. The smallest mistake, the tiniest flaw in execution and she wouldn't have sent that family out of time, but killed them. She had never tried a stasis field until it was the last option for that very reason, and yet for some reason that was the first thing she tried last night. Sure, it had worked out, she had done it right and brought them back, but what on earth possessed her to try in the first place? She must have been more tired then she had realized, and Knives must have pissed her off past her ability to reason.

If she hadn't been sure that Knives was about to bring them in to his insane little world she would never have contemplated the stasis field in the first place. No innocents should be subjected to his brand of torture. She had needed to do something to get his attention off of them and back on to her. It had worked, which was good at the time but was less enjoyable now that she was going to have to deal with him. It was bad enough that he had decided she was a prime candidate for his curiosity, although she couldn't blame him. Dream Dancer couldn't have put her in a worse place on this planet, as far as she was concerned. 

She wasn't surprised that she had ended up in this situation. All her life, it seemed, people with power amused themselves at her expense, and it looked like Dream Dancer was no exception. It was a sign of how bad her life had been that she accepted another of her hopes turning to ash so easily. She was used to it, if not resigned to it. She wasn't happy at what she did earlier that morning, though. She had tried something she shouldn't, and although it worked out in the end, she tormented herself with visions of what the result should have been. She had been too proud, too sure of herself. Maybe she was too tired, or too angry at Knives for the whole hostage idea, but she had allowed her pride to overcome her sense and others could have paid for it with their lives.

What she couldn't deny was that it had achieved the desired effect. She carefully turned over on the bed and peered down at the still figure on the floor. She had engaged his curiosity, which was much preferable to his wrath. She wanted to see what her actions last night had gifted her with. Not much light came in through the window, but it provided enough illumination for her to see his unlined brow. He slept like a child, secure in the knowledge that no harm would come to him while he slumbered. His long body took up most of the space on the floor, and she saw some of her clothes against the wall where he had pushed them. Well, she hadn't been expecting company when she went out. He had placed his pack in the corner by the window, the shadows there obscuring everything but its presence. She absently wondered what was in it.

Kiley wanted to shake her head, but held still to keep from making a noise that would wake him. She wished her conscience was clear enough to sleep the sleep of the innocent. Nothing like clarity of purpose to rationalize even the most foul of deeds, and nothing like a noble cause to provide the reasons to kill. She knew that trap, knew how easy it was to fall into, and how hard it was to escape. As soon as you kill someone for a cause, that cause becomes sacrosanct. Otherwise, you killed for nothing, for no reason, and that is a hard thing for anyone to justify. Then you keep killing for the cause, thinking that each successive death helps to validate the first one, when all it does is pull you further and further into its trap.

The worst part for her was that she couldn't blame him for his opinion of humans. Show someone your worst side and they aren't likely to believe you can be better. Being abused as a child, and for no reason he could fathom outside of the cardinal sin of being different, well, that can warp anyone. The bright ones can be twisted farthest, as they are unable to find any simple reason that makes sense. They search for deeper reasons to the hatred and as they search they roam through deeper and darker realms of evil. Looking at those places leaves marks on the soul that not even time can erase. 

So she could understand his crusade, could understand why he followed it so assiduously, but it didn't make him any less wrong. He had fallen from the light so far he had forgotten what it was like to just be alive, to just greet each day as a gift from the heavens. Instead each day was another chance to fulfill his mission. That's a cold and lonely way to live. She knew that well, maybe better then anyone else here. 

Poor bastard, she thought. Pretty sad that the person who best understands you is me.

Kiley didn't spend very much time wallowing in self-pity or contemplating the sleeping form of the psychopath on the floor. That family from last night was probably going to want a few answers, and she didn't have any she wanted to give them. Her best tactic was to be far, far away when that moment came, a tactic that wasn't going to work if she didn't get her butt out of town soon.

She sat up, and the sound of her slipping out of the sheets woke Knives. She paused, common courtesy telling her that waking someone in the same room from slumber was something to be avoided, but she continued when she remember that it was Knives, someone on whom manners are wasted. 

He looked at her with that strange gaze of his. She couldn't read the expression on his face; the room was still too dark, even though false dawn was beginning to lighten the world outside. She pushed the covers off all the way and walked out of the room. Knives' eyes followed her the entire way, but he didn't move. It must be nice to be so sure of yourself, she thought absently. She stepped around his body, prone upon the floor and taking up most of the available space. 

Reaching the hall, she rolled her eyes but didn't say anything. Expecting Knives not to act like an asshole was like expecting sunlight to be cold. You could always deceive yourself into thinking whatever you want, but that doesn't change the nature of the beast. She washed up at the washroom down the hall, not lingering over her morning rituals but washing off the dust and grime of last night with practiced motions.

Upon returning to the room, she saw that Knives had made good use of the time she was gone. Everything that had been in her pack had joined the clothes she had left on the floor last night. Knives had turned out every pocket in her pack, and was now checking the seams, making sure she had secreted nothing there.

"It's clean," she said. She looked at the mess on the floor and sighed. She had finally found another pair of pants she liked, but aside from those and a knife she hadn't purchased anything else that traveled with her. Knives glanced up at her but didn't stop his search until he had checked every square inch of canvas. Finished with his inspection, he tossed the bag at her. She caught it handily and proceeded to turn the insides in again. 

Knives rose gracefully to his feet and pushed past her to the hallway. She rolled her eyes again, thinking that this was probably her safest response to his lack of manners, and took the place he had vacated, ready to refill her pack. The idea of looking through his pack teased through her mind, but she dismissed the idea as beneath her. Just because Knives had no manners didn't allow her to stoop to his level. Besides, it was probably booby-trapped, and she didn't think she was going to have time to get around them before he came back. 

Instead she used the moment of privacy to change out of her soiled clothes. These were wadded in a ball and shoved in the bottom of the pack, followed by her pretty blanket, and topped by the remainder of her clean underwear. She hoped that the next stop would give her time to do her laundry, or things were going to get grubby, fast. She shoved the remainder of the ration bars in one side pocket and her ammunition in the other. She fiddled with the ammo, putting it in the pocket and taking it out until she was satisfied with ease of access. Nothing worse then having ammunition you can't get to. 

She was sitting on the bed and lacing up her boots when Knives walked in. He didn't look like he was surviving on four hours sleep, she thought pettily. But then, again, neither did she. Her body was used to the torments she put it through and didn't show as much wear as it used to. She picked up her pack and slung it over one shoulder, then slipped around Knives and back into the hallway. She heard him pick up his pack behind her as she returned to the washroom to refill her canteen. Before she could finish that task he had reappeared behind her, silent as a ghost and twice as spooky. 

She left the key to her room on the counter of the bar, along with a neatly printed note apologizing for the mess she had left on the bed. That done, she turned and left the inn.

The town had that eerie, deserted look that most towns have in the early hours of the morning. Not another soul was stirring outside, but a few lights shining out windows were evidence that others were moving about as well. The town wasn't very big, and it was only a matter of minutes before they had left it behind.

As they walked along, Kiley mulled over her new traveling buddy. She couldn't think of anyone on the planet she wouldn't have picked before him, but he can't be entirely bad, right? She struggled to find something positive to say about him, and finally settled on his quiet nature. It was nice to walk with someone who knew the value of silence. It made it easier for her to pretend that he wasn't there. 

They walked for hours in complete silence, the morning dying before they paused. Knives still hadn't said a word, which both relieved and bothered Kiley in turn. She had no point of reference for his silence, and it made her antsy. Was he being quiet because he had nothing to say, or because he was about to unleash his killing rage? She knew that her entire bargaining position was dependent on his curiosity, and she wasn't sure when his rage would overwhelm his curiosity. So she walked, and she worried, and Knives trailed along after her like an albatross in her shadow.

When he spoke, she jumped, startled, then cursed herself for giving him the satisfaction of seeing her be startled. 

"Teach me, now, human," he said, his voice lifeless. She could see the smirk that must be on his face in her mind's eye, but when she turned to look at him his face was carefully blank.

"Well," she said, "your first lesson could be manners." Her voice was flip, her comment was not. Who died and left this asshole god, she wondered. Then she remembered the ships full of people, the butterflies and the spiders, and rolled her eyes at the absurdity of it all. 

Knives' face stayed blank, but she knew he was irritated. That was fine by her; she was a bit irritated herself and didn't mind spreading it about. She wondered anew at what god she had offended to end up here. God of horribly obnoxious super creatures? Maybe. God of how much torment can we heap on a soul before we crush it? Could be. God of turnabout is fair play? Likely. She smiled to herself, said nothing more, and kept walking. 

Knives was shocked at her audacity. No one could be allowed to get away with such insolent behavior. He dropped his pack and darted in front of her, grabbing her arm and stopping her before it could hit the ground. The muffled thump as it hit the sand was an accent to the surprise she felt at his action. Kiley stared up at him, pain momentarily clear in her eyes. The pain was quickly submerged in a flash of rage. She didn't struggle, didn't try to pull her arm away but glared at him, sending her hate to him in her gaze. 

Knives was unfazed. He didn't care what the vermin thought of him, as long as she did what she was told. He squeezed harder, to prove his point, then let her arm go. She let it drop to her side but didn't unlock her eyes from his.

Then she smiled, amusement starting in her eyes and through her body, relaxing her angry pose.

"You are so going to hate your first lesson," she said with a sardonic little smile. She dropped her gaze and looked for a place to sit. Seeing as the world was sand, sand, and more sand she picked a mostly flat spot and dropped to the ground in one smooth motion. She ended up in a lotus position, her shoulders back, spine straight and pointing to the earth. She rolled her head and neck, relaxing the muscles. Knives noted the ease in which she assumed the position, and guessed correctly that this was a common occurrence for her.

"Sit," she commanded, pointing in front of her.

He did, and with almost as much grace as he copied her pose. She stood again and checked his posture. She shifted his lower back to correct his pose, then thumped him on his shoulder as he tensed.

"Relax," she said. "You're the one who wants this."

"I didn't say I wanted you to touch me," he replied frostily. "You are acting much to forward for a mere parasite on the surface of the world."

"Whine, whine, whine. You're acting like I actually want to touch you," she replied as she settled on the sand again. 

"Then don't," he said, although it was more of a command then a suggestion.

"Do you want me to pass on what I know?" she asked. At his nod she continued. "I've never. . . taught," she stumbled over the word but continued, "any of these tricks before. You get to learn the way I did, and that involves physical contact."

He looked at her askance. "How much?" he asked cautiously.

"Your virtue is safe; it's mostly just holding hands. That's the first thing you get to learn."

"How to hold hands? If you are trying to con me. . ." Knives started to get angry but Kiley cut him off.

"It's not the holding hands that is important. It's the link."

"Link?" repeated Knives caustically.

"Just give me your damn hand; you'll see," said Kiley. 

He hesitated and Kiley stole it out of his lap. "Stop being difficult. You asked me to train you, now quit bitching about how it works. Now close your eyes."

Knives didn't.

"Close your damn eyes!" she shouted, and Knives surprised himself by complying.

"Now, try to empty your mind of thought." He did, not expecting anything to happen, and not surprised. He felt Kiley fumble with his hand, moving it about until their fingertips touched. 

Flying. . . pink. . . elephants? What the hell? Knives pulled his hand out of her grasp and stood up. Kiley stayed seated, her eyes still closed. 

"That was a link," she said quietly as he paced the sand in front of her. "My mind put thoughts in your mind. If you can't handle that, then forget about learning anything from me."

"You will use words," Knives demanded, grabbing her shoulders and hauling her to her feet. 

"Words don't work. The only way to learn this sort of stuff is to do it yourself or have someone do it through you. That's what the link is for. I do something, and if we're linked, you do it at the same time. You remember it, and it's learned. Words are too vague for mental exercises like these." She was angry, angry at being forced to touch his mind at all. And he had the balls to object to her having to touch him? Gah! How did she always attract the psychopaths?

He dropped her and she fell unresisting to the sand.

"Look, I'm no more happy I get to touch that cesspool you call a mind then you are happy I have to. It's the way this sort of thing works. Either accept it or forget about learning. Those are your options."

Knives walked off to the east, but Kiley didn't rejoice. His pack was still on the road behind them, so he was coming back. She pondered watching him pace, but discarded the notion in favor of taking a nap. She was sure Knives wouldn't hesitate to let her know his decision when he finally made one. She was just as sure she wasn't going to like it, whatever it might be.

*******************************************************************************

She was awoken by a kick in the side. Her first thought was to pretend that it hadn't woken her up. Maybe he would go away if she played dead. Of course, with Knives, that wasn't a smart plan. He might believe she was dead, but he would shoot her in the head just to make sure before he left. Thorough to a fault, he was. 

So she groaned and made much of stretching and waking up because she could see that it bugged him. She pushed her luck for a minute but reached her feet before Knives decided she needed another firm push in the ribs, courtesy of his foot. The suns had moved more then a few degrees in their path across the sky. Whatever conclusion Knives had come to, it had taken him at least an hour.

"What are the limits to the link?" asked Knives without preamble.

Kiley opened her mouth to answer and a yawn popped out.

"Sorry," she said when she finished. "Someone rudely woke me up." At Knives' glare she assumed a properly submissive, albeit sarcastic, stance and answered his question. 

"It is easier to say what the link can do then what it cannot," she started. "Despite what you may think it is primarily a learning tool, a method of information exchange. It is not a means to access the mind of a link partner. One cannot link with another and then rummage through his thoughts; all one can do is impart information that they already possess. It is a process to share information that has been pared to its bare essentials.

"There is a small amount of unintentional information transfer, mostly emotions or feelings. You may have sensed a bit of loathing interspersed with your flying pink elephants, although I did try to keep the information transfer clean. I would be surprised if you picked up on it before freaking out and running into the desert."

Knives backhanded her across the face. Kiley's eyes lost their focus, but she finished up her recitation.

"The depth of the link depends on the intimacy of contact made. Touching fingertips as we did is as impersonal a touch as has been discovered. Therefore that link is least prone to unintentional emotional contact. Holding hands provides a deeper link, which is more informative, but is harder to keep impersonal. I've heard that having sex while linked can literally blow your mind from the emotional feedback, but that's hearsay. I've never seen or heard of a specific couple who had that problem."

She fell silent and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth. She had accidentally bit her lip when Knives hit her, but it had been worth it. She needed to know where his boundaries were, where the limits were before he snapped. Accusing him of cowardice was obviously one of them. Even when he was a coward.

After enough blinking her eyes finally agreed to focus again. Knives was still standing in front of her, looking at her oddly. He stepped close, close enough that her eyes were having a bit of trouble focusing on his face. His breath was warm on her skin, his eyes were clear and blue, right in front of hers. He reached down and grasped her hand, pulling it up to her lips.

She wondered what he was doing but assumed that he was going to try a link. She marshaled inner defenses, bulwarks that he didn't know could exist, let alone counter as the moment stretched on. She stared into his eyes, not having much else she could do. Defiance in the face of overwhelming strength was her preferred method of idiocy.

Knives lifted her hand to his lips, then licked her blood off her fingers. He made the motions sensual and slow, enjoying the perversion. She tried to pull her hand away but he held her wrist firmly in a grip of iron. His tongue was moist against her skin, but as soon as he was finished her hand was dry.

"You taste sweet," he said, looking into her eyes, looking for her reaction. She didn't know what he saw, but whatever it was, he smiled and stepped away. He was walking back to pick up his discarded pack, and she entertained the hope that they might make a town before sunset. She stared after him, wondering what was going on in that strange blonde head. She was hungry and wanted a nice filling dinner, but had a feeling that her wants were going to be ignored yet again.

Knives, however, was feeling pleased with himself. That same pause he had witnessed in the ship had appeared in her eyes again. She seemed to know what would piss him off, and took great joy in applying that knowledge. That she didn't know everything came as a relief. 

He wondered if he could trust her dissertation on the limits of a link, but also wondered if he had much choice. He had decided that what she might teach him was worth the aggravation she caused, or at least for now. If it turned out that most of her tricks were like this link thing she would not live much longer. 

He did wonder at why she was willing to push him to his limits. Either she was incredibly sure of herself or she had a death wish. Knives couldn't decide which was the case, but allowed that it could be both. She might be very sure of herself, but careless of finding out if she were wrong. If that were the case, he would have to be careful of his anger for a while. It would be a shame to break such a fun toy before he got to play with it for awhile.

The taste of her blood still lingered on his tongue, and he smiled. He hadn't lied; she was sweet. He wondered what it would be like to bathe in such sweet blood, and resolved to someday find out.


	6. Thin ice in the desert

Please don't sue.

Ok. Guys, I have a bit of a problem. What's with the reviews that say "Can't wait for the next chapter"? Am I not updating frequently enough? I mean, I'm trying, I really am!! Also, I realize you all want to know who Kiley is, and why she knows all about Knives, etc. I'm getting to that, soon. Promise. That is, as long as the story doesn't change its mind on me again, and throw in some more detail stuff that pushes the explanations off some more.

*************************************************************************

They had a bit of a problem when they reached the town. 

"We won't be going there," said Knives quietly. 

Kiley didn't pause, but did ask over her shoulder, "Why not?"

Knives had stopped. His answer was slightly garbled by the distance but she caught the drift of it. He wasn't going to mix with the nasty humans.

"That's nice," she yelled back. "Have fun out here in the sand!" Then she walked over a rise and was lost to view.

It didn't take Knives long to reach her. 

"I know your hearing isn't all that good, but I shouldn't have to repeat myself. We are not entering that town." She could tell that he was getting mad, which was nice. She decided it was one of the few things she liked about him; he was easy to piss off.

Kiley paused long enough to give Knives an exasperated look, then pushed past him. He grabbed her arm and stopped her. "Where do you think you are going?" he asked.

"Knives, it's obvious. See the town? I'm going to the town. There's food there, and a bed, and I like both things very much." She was unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice, but then again, she didn't really try.

"Don't be more of a moron then you have to be. You are not entering that town," he grated out.

"Oh, 'we' meant the two of us. I thought you were just using the royal 'we,'" she said in a voice heavy with exasperation. "What the hell are you talking about? I don't recall giving you permission to run my life," she said, pulling her arm from his grasp.

"You will do as I tell you, or you will die," said Knives, his voice gone soft with menace.

"Stop that," she said, tired of his attempts to control her. "Either try to kill me now, or wait until after you learn what I know." Her voice went cold, and she said, "But. Don't. Ever. Try to dictate what I will and will not do on my own time. It's not your place, and you do not have the right." Something flashed in her eyes, deadly and sure of itself.

Knives wasn't smart enough to drop the issue. "You will do what I tell you, when I tell you. . ." He was cut off by a right hook that he didn't see coming. The blow was powerful enough to send him sprawling to the sand. Kiley didn't pause to check her work but continued on her way into town. 

She wondered what she was going to have for dinner. She hoped it was steak, something thick, juicy and meaty, and maybe some nice crisp vegetables. Yeah, that sounded good. . . whoop!

She ended up face first in the sand, pushed forward by the force of the blow. Sputtering, she flipped onto her back and cleared the sand from her nose. As soon as that was done she launched herself in the general direction of Knives, fingers twisted into claws and ready to draw blood. 

Knives had stayed close by to enjoy his work and was not prepared for her counterattack. She forced him on the ground, and the two of them rolled around in the sand for a few minutes, trading scratches and punches with wild abandon. Neither tried to talk, and neither tried to get away. Both were focused on causing pain to the annoying irritant that had possessed the audacity to attack.

Hands grasped to throttle, arms were raised to block punches, nails scratched harmlessly against clothing, and knees and feet were aimed in haphazard kicks. The most serious wounds received were bruises, but many were applied to every accessible inch of flesh.

The fight lasted for almost ten minutes, but finally drew to a finish. Both participants backed off at the same moment, sure their point had been made. They stared at each other, panting slightly from exertion. Knives' expression slowly grew more smug, pleased that Kiley had stopped her trek to the town ahead. This vermin before him should know better then to believe that she could defy him.

His pleased mood lasted until she started to laugh. It started out as a snicker, passed into a giggle, then evolved into a full belly laugh. That in turn was chocked off when her ribs protested, but she still looked at him with amusement.

"What's so damn funny?" he asked.

"You are," she replied. At the look on his face she elaborated. "I really don't see what your bloody problem is. You seem to think that my walking into that town is a bad idea. Logically, I don't see what your problem is.

"One, if you're worried about losing track of me, then you're just being foolish. You tracked me through how many towns before the last one? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't lose me in this one. You've been stalking me for weeks; it's not like you don't know when I get up, when I tend to leave a town, what direction I would be traveling in, and so on. 

"Two, if you're worried about having to come in with me and mix with the "vermin," you really shouldn't. All you need to be is your natural charming self and no one will want to have anything to do with you. They might start out trying to be nice to you, but just give them a few lines of how superior you are to every other form of life on this planet and I can assure you they will leave you alone.

"Three, if you're worried about paying for the room," and at his snarl she smiled and continued, "if you ask nicely I might be able to get us a double room. And if you say you're sorry for being an asshole, I'll even buy you dinner. Deal?"

Knives stared at her, stunned by her audacity. She persisted in treating him as if he were merely her equal. What possessed her to insist that she had any right or say in her life? Didn't she know that he was so naturally superior that she should be pleased to follow his every order? What was wrong with her, that she believed that she was on a par with him?

Kiley watched as he struggled with the concept of equality. Poor man, she thought. So used to being the biggest badass on the planet that he couldn't accept the notion that he could possible have an equal. Well, she was used to being the biggest badass on a planet as well. She knew that she wasn't making the situation easy for Knives, but then Knives was the sort of person who couldn't do things the easy way. He was too used to getting his own way all the time to accept that other people might like to be afforded the same courtesy. 

She was used to getting her own way as well, which was part of the problem. Of course, her own way involved her, and her alone. She didn't try to order people to live their lives according to her notions of superiority. If Knives would just recognize that he wasn't going to be able to control her life would get a bit easier. 

But maybe not as fun. She smiled at the thought. Her intrinsic barbarity always showed through at times like these. It had been a very long time since she had been in a brawl like that one, scrabbling and wrestling in the sand. There was something to be said for fighting like that, inflicting pain without permanent harm. No one had dared fight her for years; her reputation preceded her and scared the smart ones away. The stupid ones were to easy finish off and never could be as much fun as that last little fracas. Nothing like fighting someone who could take a little pain, and could give as good as they got. Knives wasn't going to learn equality quickly, so she would probably get into a few more fun little fights.

With that last thought she stood up and walked over to where her pack lay in the sand. As she stooped to pick it up she heard Knives make a strange strangled noise. She looked over at him. His face showed signs of some great inner turmoil. She waited for him to say whatever it was that was causing him so much trouble, sure she was going to relish the words.

"I'm," he started, then paused. His face turned a bright shade of crimson, but Kiley couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or anger. "I'm sorry," he choked out. "I," and another long pause, "was an. . ."

This next pause stretched into infinity. Knives had nearly worked himself into apoplexy apologizing. The second criterion was beyond him.

"Apology accepted. We'll work on that second part," she assured him, then waited for him to grab his bag. They walked the rest of the way into town in silence, he fuming and she smiling. 

Dinner was near. So was a bed. 

Simple pleasures are best.

***********************************************************************

They reached town only a few minutes before the sun slipped below the horizon. They walked in silence, Kiley absorbed with thoughts of food, and Knives absorbed with thoughts of retribution. She was going to suffer for every moment of humiliation she put him through. 

What irked him the most was the feeling that he was losing control of the situation. He was used to taking what he wanted from someone, not asking for it. It gave her entirely too much leeway to ignore his commands. She knew that he wasn't going to kill her, and she seemed immune to threats of pain or physical harm. She didn't run from confrontations, but instead seemed to court them, fascinated by the chaos they sowed. It was as if she enjoyed watching chaos break a pattern, then was fascinated by seeing what new pattern arose.

This joy in chaos, coupled with her annoying competency had him off-balance. His task would be easier if she seemed to care what result her actions caused. If she would just desire something, he could use that to influence her. Everyone is shaped by what they want, what they strive to achieve. Knives was adept at using these desires to manipulate people to his own ends. The problem with the woman was that she didn't seem to want anything at all, or at least nothing he could use.

He glanced over at her. She was obviously thinking about food. How was he supposed to use that to coerce knowledge out of that infuriating mind of hers? She gave no indication of thinking beyond the next few minutes, the next meal, or the next town. To all appearances she wasn't thinking of much at all. 

Knives wasn't willing to believe that. She had managed to trap him, to use his desires to manipulate him to unknown ends. He was beginning to understand that she had purposely used such a spectacular demonstration of mental powers to entice his curiosity, to make it impossible for him to rid this planet of her presence before he was able to wring the knowledge from her.

How did this human know his greatest weakness? There were only two reasons for him to keep from disposing of a vermin: because he could use them, and because they intrigued him. Rem had intrigued him; at times he wished he could have figured out what his brother saw in her that made him adore her so. Maybe, if he had been given more time he could have learned. But she made her choice and he was left wondering just what was so wonderful about that pacifistic woman.

Knives shot another glance at the woman walking beside him. He hadn't thought this much about the past, or about his own motives for years. Why was he doing so now? It was incomprehensible, maddening, and worst of all, he was losing control. 

His musing were interrupted by a destination. A golden light was beginning to illuminate the street as the glow from the suns dissipated. Loud and off-key music came pouring joyfully from the building. Voices wove around each other, creating a wall of sound that had a physical presence. 

Kiley paused before the building and turned towards him. "Knives," she said, almost shouting to be heard over the noise from the inn, "Try not to kill anyone." At his cold look she amended her dictate. "At least try to wait until morning. I really, really want to sleep in a bed tonight." Her sincerity was both obvious and disturbing. No one had ever accepted his propensity for random acts of slaughter so easily, or given him such a flimsy reason to abstain from indulging.

He really didn't want to go in there, but he even less wanted Kiley to know he didn't want to enter. He set his jaw and forced himself to follow her into the common room. The cacophony was just as bad as he had feared it would be. The racket was almost deafening, assaulting his ears. 

The sight that greeted his eyes was almost as bad. Humans were piled in the room, packed until the room was almost at its capacity. Kiley strode through the mass of people, pushing some out of her way while slipping around others. Knives didn't bother with moving around people. Instead he began walking forward and the humans found themselves making way for him. He obtained a table in the corner and sat down. His eyes scanned the room, looking for some trouble he could get into but no one would meet his gaze.

"Quit sulking," said Kiley, placing a dinner tray in front of him. "You look petulant." 

"I was not sulking," replied Knives frostily as he picked up his fork. "I was merely deciding how I wished to kill everyone here."

"Before or after dinner?" she inquired politely.

"After," came the reply, muffled by a mouthful of food.

"Good. Are you sure you can't wait until after I get a good night's sleep?" she asked.

"We'll see," said Knives. "It depends on how nice you are to me."

"I bought you dinner, does that count?" 

Knives considered the matter. "It's a start," he allowed.

"What more do you need?" she pressed.

He put down his fork and allowed his gaze to roam the room aimlessly. Her eyes followed where his led, and Kiley wondered what he was looking for. His eyes returned to her, a decision evident. 

Instead of relaying it, Knives picked up his fork and began to eat again. 

"Well?" asked Kiley. "What more do you want?"

"Get me some money," he said, waving to a table off to the side. Four men were playing cards, gambling. 

"You want me to play poker." She looked at him for affirmation and he nodded. "You're sure about this?" she pressed. 

Knives nodded again, beginning to get exasperated. 

Kiley's face grew serious, and she nodded. "All right."

She finished her dinner, wiped her hands on the napkin, then slowly walked over to the table where the men were playing.

"Care to deal me in?" she asked of the man with the deck. The cards were dwarfed in his large hands. He looked at her, gaze traveling from waist to breasts before he nodded and waved her to a place at the table next to him.

Kiley cashed one of her bills at the bar and settled down at the table. The men around it eyed her with unguarded interest as she counted the coins and stacked them neatly in front of her. She looked at them as well, but was a bit less obvious about it. Well, since she wasn't ogling them she couldn't quite be as obvious as they were. She treated them all to an empty smile, and the man to her left grinned back. He dealt the cards, slinging them across the table with the ease of practice.

"My name's Roger," he offered as she picked up her cards. "That one's Tim," Tim waved, "Dahrk," Dahrk nodded, "and the skinny one's Tiny." Tiny was neither small nor skinny. He also wasn't very personable; he only glanced up from his cards long enough to let her know she was being dismissed.

"My name's Kiley," she told them with another empty-headed smile. 

"Well, Ki," said Tim, "I'm glad you're here. Maybe with you around these scoundrels will stop stealing _my _money." He gave the men to his left a pointed started. Dahrk had the grace to look embarrassed, but Tiny ignored the comment altogether. 

Conversation was limited; the noise around them made it hard to be heard, and small talk wasn't worth the effort. Kiley played conservatively, betting small and winning small, never overplaying her hand, and rarely bluffing. 

After a few hands the men accepted her as part of their group, willing to let her play. She wasn't too lucky, she wasn't too greedy, and while they might have preferred lager wagers, they were willing to take what money of hers they could. She also didn't seem to have the mental capacity needed to cheat. Kiley was using her best idiot-female routine to loosen suspicions from their minds, and it was working.

About half an hour later, Tim threw down his cards and picked up his stake. 

"I've lost enough money tonight," he said in farewell, leaving the table amicably. His leaving didn't slow the pace of the card game, but it did shift the focus of the game a little. The men who were left began to play a little differently. Kiley spent her time watching the men around her, trying to discern what they did when they had a good hand or a bad one.

Roger was the easiest of the lot to figure out. When he had a good hand his breathing would speed up; with a really good hand he would almost hyperventilate. Tiny was a bit harder to judge. He didn't have any obvious clues, but when his hand was a good one his actions would get a little tight, a little over-controlled. As soon as she saw it the first time, she could tell when his hand was good for the rest of the night.

Dahrk was a bit harder. He sat at his ease for the entire game. His left shoulder was slung over the back of the chair, his legs were stretched out under the table, and his head was tucked on his chest. She watched him closely out of the corner of her eye, and when she finally caught him out she almost laughed. When he had a good hand, his left hand would sneak behind the chair back and fiddle nervously with the side. 

After that she didn't lose much money, steadily increasing her winnings with small bets, exclaiming over her good fortune with air-headed glee, and bemoaning the losses with a pout. She made sure to lose big when she lost. That, coupled with her slipping money off the table little by little, made it more difficult for the men to gauge the amount she was really winning.

Throughout the entire game she made sure to keep an eye on Knives. He seemed to be behaving himself, but obviously wasn't having a good time. His gaze rested on the far wall, dismissing the crowded room of people as beneath his notice. He only needed to rudely rebuff the serving lady a couple times before she left him alone for the rest of the night. His attitude kept people away, for which Kiley was grateful. She didn't know what it would take to set him off on a killing rampage and she had learned that this inn had a shower. An actual _shower_. She really didn't want to have to go sneaking off again tomorrow morning without a chance to get clean. 

After over an hour's worth of play she excused herself, pleading tiredness. The guys made a token effort to get her to stay, but a few inane giggles later and they were more then willing to let her go. She gathered up what was on the table and went back over to where Knives was sitting. 

"Let's go," she said, putting her hand out to help him to his feet. Knives looked at her hand like it carried the plague, then rose out of the chair without taking it. Kiley dropped her hand to her side and resisted the urge to shrug. She picked up her pack and motioned for Knives to walk ahead of her. The crowd magically parted before him again, and she trailed along in his wake. 

Upon reaching the room, Kiley produced a key and unlocked the door. Knives pushed in first and took the bed farthest away from the window. She looked at him and resisted the urge to shrug again. Harder to resist was the urge to tell him to stop acting like a child, but there was an edginess to him that made her not want to rile him up.

Kiley pulled the money she had won out of her pockets and dumped it on Knives' bed.

"Here," she said. "So, are you going to kill anyone tonight?" she asked, a smile in her voice but not on her face.

"No," said Knives waspishly. "These obnoxious vermin are safe from me today." Kiley didn't miss the non-subtle emphasis on the word today, but let it pass without comment.

"Did you enjoy your time down there?" she asked after an uncomfortable silence had fallen.

"You are a moron," said Knives.

Kiley waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming.

"Come again?" she asked after a minute.

"Even an idiot would realize that I did not wish to be down there."

She looked at him quizzically. "What was so wrong? No one did anything to you. I watched. The only one who was at all rude was you, to that poor waitress."

"She annoyed me," he said. 

"Everyone annoys you," she said. "That's no excuse to be rude."

Silence stretched out between them again. Kiley sat down on the bed and took off her shoes, wincing as her sore heels chafed against the sides while she wiggled them off. 

"What was so wrong?" she asked again, quietly, not looking al Knives.

She was surprised when he actually answered.

"They all kept staring at me, looking at me," he said venomously.

Surprised, Kiley looked up.

"Looking at you?" she asked, wanting clarification.

"Yes, looking at me. I hate the gazes of you vermin, your eyes weighing me, staring at me, dissecting me," he said angrily.

Kiley couldn't stop the laughter that escaped her throat, but she was able to choke it off after one quick bark.

"Knives," she said to explain herself, aware of the weight of his ire, "I can't believe I need to explain this to you. For those lucky few not acquainted with your personality, you are a very attractive man. People stare at you because they aren't used to seeing someone as handsome as you seem. No one looks at you and sees a plant, so chill."

She looked over at him and couldn't quite figure out the expression on his face. She could not believe that with all his intelligence, he couldn't have figured that one out on his own. She saw him weigh the idea in his mind, and dismiss it. He obviously didn't believe her.

************************************************************************

Kiley woke up early the next morning and silently gathered up her clothes. The darkness of the room was almost absolute, but she didn't risk a light. Her bare feet treaded whisper soft on the floor as she moved with sure grace around the clutter that littered the floor. She reached the door without incident, but as her hand grasped the handle Knives' voice cut through the night.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked, not bothering to be quiet.

Kiley flicked on the light, then turned sheepishly to face the grumpy figure on the bed.

"Sorry, I was trying to keep from waking you. I'm going to take a shower," she said quietly, showing a little more concern for the thin walls then Knives did.

She grinned as she watched him take in the clothes in her arms, and the fact that she didn't have her pack. She could tell when he made the decision not to accuse her of sneaking out on him. His eyes took in her feet, and when he saw she didn't even have her shoes he deduced correctly that she wasn't planning on going outside. It was sloppy reasoning on his part, but she wasn't going to correct it. There were lots of reasons: one, he was paranoid enough, two, she didn't need to remind him that she was capable of doing things outside of his assumptions so early in the morning, and three, it was useful for her to know that Knives equated bare feet with sticking around. If she ever needed to run, that sort of information might come in handy.

Knives settled back on the bed and flung an arm over his eyes. "Turn off the light," he commanded. She did, then turned and padded down the hall, rolling her eyes. He had enough arrogance for ten kings, their prime ministers, and all the members of their cabinets together.

The bathing room was deserted at this hour. The heat for the water had been turned off some time ago, but that didn't bother her. She drew enough water for a proper bath, concentrated, then stepped into a steaming pool of water. The heat relaxed muscles she hadn't realized were tight, and she released her cares while she enjoyed the luxury of the moment. For the first time since she arrived in Knives' ship she stopped worrying. She no longer had the homicidal maniac following after her. Instead, she was sharing a room with him, a preferable arrangement if it meant she didn't have to worry every single second that he was going to burst in the door and put a bullet through her heart.

She only worried about that once every five minutes or so, now. Sighing, she settled deeper in the water and pondered her dilemma. Knives was capable of destroying the world, given the right set of circumstances. She was running about the world, dragging him after her, unsure what exactly it would take to set him off. She knew she probably shouldn't tease him, annoy him, and certainly shouldn't anger him, but she couldn't stop herself. There was something about him that she just couldn't resist needling. 

Maybe it was because he was so serious all the time. Maybe it was because he was so focused on his mission in life that he made it too easy for her to get a rise out of him. Maybe it was because she needed to feel that she had some control over the situation. Maybe it was because it was fun. Or maybe it was because she was an ornery bitch who loved to cause trouble for well meaning folks.

She heard the echo of her stepfather's voice in the last thought and sighed. She settled even deeper into the water, until only her eyes and nose were in the air. Or maybe it was because if anyone needed to learn that they weren't in control of life, it was Knives. 

Whatever the reason, she knew she was playing with fire when she teased him. She knew that when you play with fire, you're liable to get burned, but she was willing to risk that. What bothered her was that she didn't know if she could keep the burn from spreading. She was willing to accept the risk to herself; she didn't want to put others at risk of catching the fallout from her actions.

Knives was a bright boy, and he was beginning to realize that she could handle the mental crap he threw at her. He was picking up on the fact that pain didn't sway her from a course of action. He was having trouble with the notion that he couldn't intimidate her into compliance, but gradually he was recognizing the fact. Worse of all, he knew that she was going to try to save any hostages he might take.

She leaned over and grabbed a bottle of shampoo and began to lather her hair. She didn't know how she was supposed to fix that last little problem. While keeping away from people would probably work, people had water, and food, and provided things like roofs, ammo, and clothing. She also didn't know how long her mind would last if the only person around was Knives. She'd probably go insane as well.

Ducking her head under water she shook it rapidly to dislodge dirt and soap, then used her fingers to complete the rinse. She tried to shake away her thoughts, but they were not as easily shaken. 

What bothered her was she knew she was smart. She should have been able to solve this problem already. It hadn't taken her long to figure out her trap for Knives; she was slightly surprised it had taken him as long as it did to catch up with her. But now that he was here, she didn't know what to do with him. 

She didn't want to teach him mind tricks, and then have him turn around and indiscriminately kill people with them. In taking the role of his teacher, she had assumed responsibility for what he did with what he learned. She sat up and climbed out of the bath, then walked over to the shower. She didn't bother to heat this water, but kept it cold to help clear the cobwebs from her mind.

Somehow she was either going to have to wean him from his crusade, or she was going to have to kill him. The first option wasn't going to be easy, and it was likely the second wouldn't be as well. What complicated matter was the feeling she got, that underneath all the crap Knives showed the world, there was a decent person, trapped in a cage of his own devising. 

She knew the best villains had a pretense of humanity, a veneer of good that served to throw their evil into greater relief. The problem was one never could be certain just how deep that veneer went. Was there enough good in Knives for him to be redeemable, or was she just fooling herself? And if she was fooling herself, was it because she liked Knives, or just didn't want to have to kill again?

She turned off the shower and got dressed, her questions floating in her mind without answers.

Kiley returned to the room, but only to drop off her dirty clothes. She carefully opened the door and pushed the pile in, then closed the door. Satisfied that she had made as little noise as was humanly possible, she turned and went down the stairs and into the empty common room.

Here she stretched for a few minutes, carefully tensing and releasing every muscle. She stood on the tips of her toes and pulled her arms as high above her head as she could reach. This was followed by rolling the neck and shoulders, rotating her waist and flexing her knees. She stretched out her legs and arms, concentrating on the major muscle groups. Once her entire body was feeling loose she started what had once been her normal morning routine, but had been mostly ignored after she found herself in Knives' ship.

She moved through a routine that resembled martial arts in places, street fighting in others, ballet, tai chi, calisthenics, gymnastics, and self-inflicted torture. She moved silently, her breath and her feet making the only noise in the room. Occasionally she grunted as an underused muscle protested the use she was putting it to. 

Mentally she returned to the place she loved to be, a world without thought, only action and reaction, movement and motion. This was her favorite form of meditation, of reaching into the world and separating one's self from its trappings and worries. In movement she found the world denied her, that the people in it stole from her. This was her form of worship to an uncaring god, her way of denying that her life had been taken from her hands.

Gradually she became aware of aches and pains, sore muscles protesting that she was overusing them. She slowed the rhythm of her dance, gradually winding down until she stopped, standing near the center of the empty room, tired in her body but rested in her soul. 

She had closed her eyes somewhere in the middle of her practice, and opened them now. The empty room greeted her eyes, the tables that had been shoved to the walls and the stacks of chairs. Light was beginning to seep through cracks in the shutters, coloring the room in shades of gray and brown. While she stood there waiting for her breathing and heart rate to slow she pondered the room. There wasn't much there to think on, which suited her. Only the tables, and chairs, and the dust, walls, and doors. The pattern of light and shadow painted by the dawn on the floor entranced her, its everyday beauty affirmed in her mind. There was peace in the stillness of the moment, and it stretched on as she stood there, strangely reluctant to move, to break the magic that quiet released upon the world.

A quiet noise came from the direction of the kitchen, followed by the clatter of pans. The silence shattered, she turned and returned to the room.

***********************************************************************

Knives had heard her return to the room after her bath. He had dozed fitfully while she was bathing, uneasy with her absence. When she didn't enter but had stealthily left again, he was compelled to follow. She didn't notice as he slipped into the hall, or when he stood and watched her while she exercised.

He had almost returned to bed after watching her stretch for a minute, but the novelty of seeing her without her knowledge kept him around. There was a chance, however slim, that she might let something slip that he could use against her. So he stayed, hidden in the shadows, silently observing. He had slouched against the wall, using it to prop him up as his tired body protested being out of bed.

After she began her dance he no longer slouched, no longer acknowledged his tiredness. There was a wild beauty to her actions as she tumbled and fell with controlled grace across the floor. He saw power in her movements, lethality in her actions that he hadn't glimpsed before. What she had hinted at, the capabilities she had thrown in his face were shown here in her dance of death.

He had never seen anyone move the way she did. When he had recruited the Gung-Ho Guns he thought he had seen the limits of human lethality. His collection had been wondrous and varied, full of people who could kill with a thought, twist the mind and reality. When he had recruited them he had assumed that they were the epitome of killers, yet seeing her now, he had no doubts that she could have defeated them all. 

This surprised him. He had believed that only a plant would have had any chance against them, with the superior intelligence, speed, and precision that was their birthright. That was why he had sent them after Vash: to hurt his brother, but also to get them out of the way, to lessen the defense of the vermin. Watching her move, he wondered who she was all over again. She wasn't as fast as he was, or as smart, and there was no way she could ever match his accuracy, but there was something to her that almost worried him.

There was a fluidity to her motions that only added to their grace. It was as if she had found the limit of her capability and transcended it, or transformed it from a limit to a boundary, marking off the territory in which she embraced perfection. He was entranced by it, surprised to see that a human would attempt perfection in the killing dance. Every human he had known, with perhaps the exception of Legato, had tainted killing with emotion. Hate, fear, greed, desire, all these reasons to kill detracted from the beauty of death. Before him, death danced a cold, emotionless step.

He was entranced by the beauty that this human had discovered, and had inadvertently shown him. He suddenly ached to possess it, to make it his own. That a human could posses anything he could desire surprised him, but he was almost getting used to being surprised by this woman. She was like no one he had ever known before, no one. In his many years of life, he had thought he had encountered all the types of humans that populated this planet, and here before him was evidence that he was mistaken. 

Perhaps it was time to restart his collection of Gung-Ho Guns? Almost as soon as the thought entered his mind, he tried to dismiss it. He still had no means of coercion to use on her, no way to bend her to his will, and he knew that she would not use this beautiful dance without sufficient prodding. But if he could find where she came from, maybe there would be more humans like her, humans he could bend to his will. Truly, she must be the most irritating and independent human alive, and since that was an undeniable fact, anyone else like her he found must be easier to manipulate.

There were too many ifs for Knives to begin to get excited, but he did begin to plan. As her dance slowed and ended, he backed up the steps and returned to the room and his bed, pondering the ways he might learn what he wished to know.

*************************************************************************

Kiley noticed a change in Knives when she returned to the room. She wasn't sure if she was imagining it, so she said nothing, but there was something about the way he looked at her that had changed. The difference was nebulous and hard to define, but being the literal-minded person she was, she tried to put it into words. Instead of looking at her as a piece of scum problem he needed to figure out, he was looking at her like she was an intriguing vermin that he needed to figure out. It wasn't enough of a difference for her to be sure, but she had her suspicions that she had been watched while she exercised.

Suppressing a sigh, she started to pack up her clothes. She kicked the pile by the door over to her bed and grabbed the shirt off the top of the pile. She shook it, preparing to fold it and put it in her bag when she saw it was stained. Frowning, she put her clothes through a quick triage, forming two small piles: good enough to wear, and too dirty. She had been hoping to form a pile of clean clothes as well, but it appeared that she had run out of those. The too-dirty pile was the larger by far, and some of the good enough pile were pushing the edge of cleanliness. She swept the two piles together with her arms and picked them up, stooping to grab a sock that had stayed on the floor. Straightening, she turned to see Knives blocking the door. 

He leaned against it with nonchalant ease, blocking her path and staring at her, his clear blue eyes watching her impassively. She stared back, not making an issue of his obnoxious stance, but not willing to put her clothes down and play nice, either.

"What are you doing now?" he asked, his tone making it more then clear that whatever she thought she was going to do, it wasn't doing the right course of action.

"My clothes are dirty. There's a laundry service; I thought I'd use it before we leave." Her voice was patient, the calm, unhurried tone you use with toddlers and crazy people.

"We won't be spending that much time in this town," he said with finality. 

"Knives, it will take maybe four hours for my clothes to get clean. In the whole scheme of the universe, that isn't much time. Balance that with smelling me for the next however many days until you decide we can reach a town again," she said patiently, wondering if she was going to have to explain everything to him.

Knives' lip curled. "I already have to smell you, human," he said. 

"Well, I don't," she said. "And I rather like the sensation. Besides, there's some shopping that I need to do before we leave. If I drop my clothes off now, they'll be almost done by the time I get back."

He straightened a little, but didn't unblock the door. "Shopping?"

"Food," she explained. "For the most part, food. Much as the ration bars can keep body and soul together, they aren't much for taste. If you want a few days to learn without the distractions of last night, you're going to have to let me get food."

The light of understanding dawned on Knives' face. A small smile touched his lips as he anticipated having her alone in the desert, at his mercy. 

"We will leave before noon. If your clothes are not ready by then, they stay," he proclaimed.

She rolled her eyes but didn't disagree. There was no point in arguing now. If he tried dragging her out of town without her stuff, then she'd fuss. She nodded, the perfect picture of obedience, or as close as she could manage, and Knives moved out of her way. 

She dropped her clothes off and paid the laundress extra to do them first, then left the inn to find a market. She wandered a few blocks, following her nose. A restaurant was cooking breakfast, and she went in and ate a few plates of eggs and bacon, loading up on protein while she could. 

She asked the waitress where she could find a farmers market, and was given directions that led her to the other side of town. Here she spent an hour looking over the assortment of fruits, vegetables, and crafts that people were trying to sell. She picked out a good deal from the second category, a few from the first, and none from the third. She did buy a repair kit for canvas consisting of needles, heavy-duty thread, and a few swatches of fabric. She wasn't planning on ripping a hole in her pack anytime soon, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared. 

She turned from this last purchase to see Knives staring at her. He had obviously been shopping for food as well; his arms were full of leafy green veggies. She tried ignoring him, but her efforts were in vain. He strode over to her and took the repair kit from her hands. He examined it minutely, then replaced it in her grasp, turned, and walked away again. She started after him, wondering what she had missed.

"He's a cute one," said the sales lady.

"Only on the outside," she replied distractedly, moving away.

She walked slowly back towards the inn, trying to figure out what she was missing. Knives never did anything without a reason. After a few minutes of thought she tentatively concluded that he was trying to establish dominance, which wasn't much of an answer. Of course he was trying to establish dominance; that was his nature. He had to be the biggest, the best, the ultimate being. She hadn't given him many chances to prove that yesterday, which was a thought that brought a smile to her lips. 

She liked being an enigma. She had lived the majority of her life with people who presumed to know everything about her. Finding someone who didn't was nice; having it be someone like Knives was just icing on the cake. There was something infinitely enjoyable about confounding a know-it-all.

She saw a store that she needed to visit. She ducked in quickly and exited a few minutes later with a cleaning kit and oil for her gun. Now was probably the best time to check the weapon and clean out any powder that might harm the action. She still had an hour before the arbitrary deadline that Knives had set, and it would only take her a few minutes.

She was packed and ready to go fifteen minutes before noon. Everything had been squeezed into her pack, her clothes were washed and ready, and she had a shiny clean gun. The scent of gun oil clung to her fingers, a familiar smell in an unfamiliar place. She caught herself lifting her fingertips to her nose and losing herself in the aroma, losing herself in memory. When Knives cleared his throat she jumped, startled. Quickly regaining her composure, she followed him out of the room and out of the inn.

As she and Knives left for the desert, she wondered if she was ready for what was coming next.


	7. An outlaw strolls in

No Trigun ownership here. Go fish.

I seem to have run out of witty, so there will be no author's note today.

*************************************************************************

Walking through the desert is boring, Kiley decided after hours of sameness. Sand dunes as far as the eye can see, littering the landscape, decorating the landscape, circumscribing the landscape. They are the landscape. You walk up one side of a dune, down the other, across the top of the next, then in a valley. But you are always walking on a sand dune. 

She tried to look at the dunes as expressions of beauty. The sweep of the windward side, the faster drop on the lee side provided almost an hour's worth of contemplation on the nature of the sand, how it is picked up and deposited. A tiny grain that nevertheless provides the foundation for a monument to. . . dirt. She shook her head, dislodging the traitorous thought and continued.

From the vantage of the top of a dune, the world continued on in a series of waves, each moving in slow motion, like an ocean of land. If she could stand there forever, she would see the ground pass below her like waves in the sea, a tidal landmass. The dunes she saw were like a slow reflection of water, an instant of a wave captured in a form she could admire. 

The problem was, she ran out of admire before she ran out of sand dunes. It was boring out here in the sun, it was boring walking when she'd rather run, and it was boring traveling with a man who never said anything. Of course, with Knives, silence was a blessing. She didn't know what a guy who would grab his brother's severed arm as a souvenir would consider polite conversation, and she didn't want to know. 

The wind moved enough air to keep the heat from being stifling, but didn't make enough noise to provide relief from the silence. The only sounds were the whisper of falling sand as the wind pushed grains over the top of a dune and the crunch of their feet disrupting the sand.

Finally, Kiley reached her limit. With no preamble, she began to whistle a strange little tune. As entertainment went, it rather lacked the quality of being entertaining, but it broke the silence.

Knives broke his silence as well. "Quit that noise or I'll slice your lips off," he said.

She shot him a look. Yup, he was serious. Damn.

They walked along in silence for fifteen minutes. Kiley had the song stuck in her head now, which helped her ignore the silence around her, but finally she couldn't keep silent any longer. Mindful of Knives' threat, she didn't whistle. She hummed.

A moment later Knives had one hand on her mouth and the other on her spine.

"Shut. Up," he told her. She tried to nod, then made a noise of assent. Knives released her, and she stifled a sigh. This was just so boring.

They went back to the dreary trudging, up one hill and down another. Kiley resisted the urge to break into a run. She preferred running to walking, but she had a feeling that Knives' patience was wearing thin, and he didn't seem like the jogging type to her. Plus, he seemed to have a destination in mind, whereas she was merely wandering aimlessly. All things being equal, it was probably a good idea to stick by the guy with a plan.

So she walked. And he walked. And they walked together over the sand. The suns sank lower in the sky, and still they walked. And the song she had whistled and hummed was stuck in her head, repeating over and over. It reached the point where she would have rather listened to the silence.

Finally, she couldn't stand it any longer. Softly, almost under her breath, she began to sing.

__

I have the coolest bedroom

It's padded white, with little buttons on the walls

They keep it chained on the outside

Just to feel safe

Well ain't it great 

To be alive?

She reached the end of the verse, then repeated it a couple more times, matching the beat of the music to her pace, then letting it trail off into silence. Having sung it, she was able to get it out of her head, and was happy.

She had been silent for perhaps a minute when Knives said, "Sing the rest."

"Huh?" she replied. She was surprised past comprehension for two reasons. One, this was the first thing Knives had said to her without being prompted by annoyance since they left town. Two, after threatening her life before, _now _he wanted to hear more?

"The rest of the song," he said slowly, speaking as one would to a very stupid child.

"Oh, thanks. That was the part I needed clarification on," she said, her voice laden with sarcasm. "I can't; that's the only part I know."

"Then sing it again," he said. She did. When she was done, he nodded firmly. 

That was it. They continued walking, up and down the dunes, in silence. About an hour before sunset, Knives changed his course slightly. He veered off a few degrees to the right. Kiley paused on top of a dune, trying to spy some reason for the different path but could see nothing. She hurried down the hill after him and smothered the urge to pester him with questions. 

She already knew the answers would be "you'll see when we get there" and "we get there when we get there." She didn't need to hear them laced with sarcasm and insinuations of stupidity. She'd had practice in you'll-find-out-when-we-get-there before, but it had been a long time since she'd been forced into the position of follower and she was running out of patience.

She was debating opening her mouth just for something to do when they crested a dune that was slightly higher then the ones surrounding it. Looking ahead, she could see a formation of rocks. They were pillars stretching ten stories in the air, standing in a crude circle. A smile flitted across her face as she congratulated herself. She had managed to keep from asking the stupid questions, and had robbed Knives of a chance to belittle her.

It really was the little victories that she got to savor.

They walked between two of the columns and Kiley looked around, craning her neck from side to side. There were twenty-six pillars of rock reaching towards the sky, scattered almost evenly in a circle one hundred yards across. The pillars were an average of ten yards across, which was substantial, but seemed impossibly slender when contrasted with their height. She couldn't really tell in the golden light of sunset, but they appeared to be almost painted with bands of color, blues, pinks, and browns contrasting strongly with the yellow sands beyond. 

The rocks themselves stood like silent sentinels, protecting a small spring of water near the center, and a few plants that clung stubbornly to its banks. Walking slowly, she reached the edge of the pool. Water lapped the edges of a basin of rock emblazoned with the same colors as the towers surrounding them. She dipped a hand in the water, amazed at its presence in the middle of this desert. She lifted her hand up and watched the drops fall off her fingers and back into the pool, entranced by the sound and scent of the drips. Her focus shifted to the plants that lined the edge of the pool, fighting for existence between the sand and the rock edge of the pool. 

They were gorgeous, delicate, and like nothing she had ever seen before. The leaves were almost like a fern, but it would have been a fern that was more lacelike then any terrestrial fern she had seen. There were no spores on the backs of the leaves, though, and the way they attached to the stems was more like needles from an evergreen tree then a frond. This wasn't what she had been expecting, and while she had never envisioned an oasis like this one, she was entranced by it. She wanted to stick her head underneath a branch and watch the stars and moons rise though the living lace, but abstained. Instead, she turned and looked at Knives.

"This place is beautiful," she said softly, her voice conveying more emotion then the words she chose.

Knives had watched her closely, wondering at her reaction. He liked this place, but didn't know what a human would think of it. He had, well, worried might not be the right term, but he had been concerned that she would see this place and only wonder how to harness the water for profit, or see the plants and want to take cuttings to examine and dissect. He hadn't know many humans who would look at a place like this one and only see its beauty. Because he hadn't worried, he didn't relax when he heard her words, but the feeling was similar.

"It reminds me of a temple," she continued, "with the towering spires that hold up the roof of the sky. There's a peace to it, like you find in a church, of a place untouched by violence or care. Instead, it's like a shrine to life, life against all odds and possibilities, life that lies sheltered in this guarded oasis, surrounded by an ocean of dust."

He looked at her, started. She saw his reaction and grinned self-consciously.

"Sorry. I try to keep from waxing poetic, but sometimes it pops out." She shrugged, growing uneasy under his regard. She turned to the left to break eye contact and stuck her finger in her mouth. She tested the wind and moved to the lee of one of the pillars on the sheltered side. She set down her pack and set about making up a bed. She pulled out her blanket and some dinner, then settled herself on the sand to eat. During this, Knives had moved to the other side of the circle and was settling himself in as well.

After dulling the edge of her hunger, she returned to the pool and took a drink. She leaned in on her belly, careful to keep from harming one of the plants. She slurped the water up, then watched the surface grow calm. The tops of the towers were visible around the edges of the pool, but what she was watching were the reflections of the stars as they came out. One by one she saw them, then, as the suns sank below the horizon, dozens, then hundreds popping into existence below her.

Then, without warning, the silhouette of Knives' head appeared right above hers. She jumped and yelped, and the force of her breath created ripples on the water, shattering the reflection.

"It's a wonder you're still alive with those reflexes. Would it help if I told you every time I took a step?" Knives asked snidely. 

Kiley rolled over and looked at him. "If you were actually a threat, you wouldn't have been able to sneak up on me."

Knives loomed over her, his features obscured in the falling darkness. "Are you saying I'm not a threat?" His voice was cold, and Kiley imagined the look of distaste that most likely graced his features.

"Not at the moment, no," she replied calmly. "That's not to say you won't be one in a minute or two, but at the moment, you weren't planning on killing me."

Knives snorted and Kiley rolled out of the way. He leaned down on one knee and drank from the pool like a sensible being, by cupping his hand in the water and bringing it to his lips. She sat up and watched him, watched the play of the muscles in his shoulder and back, their movement under his skin, entranced. He needed to wear a form fitting shirt every day, she decided absently.

Knives had turned and sliced the area she had been sitting in, cutting the air with a blade that seemed to steal the remaining light from the day. There had been no warning, no movement in her direction prior to the lunge, but she had managed to slip out of the way.

"Sorry, Knives," she said as he paused, extended in the lunge. "I have a very finely honed survival instinct. I know when there's a threat. It was a nice test, though."

He looked up at her, his face showing no trace of surprise. A moment passed, and then he stood up and made the knife disappear. Kiley couldn't tell where it went, but didn't worry about that. Knowing that he carried one was better then just assuming, and figuring out where he kept it could be a problem for later.

"Where the hell did you come from?" he asked. He had tried to keep his voice impassive but a note of wonder crept in all the same.

Kiley chuckled. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." And that was the last thing she said to him that night.

*************************************************************************

Kiley awoke before the dawn again. The air was cold, nipping at her nose and trying to convince her to stay wrapped up in her blanket. It worked for a few minutes, luxury winning out over deprivation. The warmth was comforting, a big hug that saved her from the freezing nature of the desert night. The soft, regular beat of her heart echoed throughout her body as she relaxed in the heat. Thoughts drifted slowly through the warmth, and she wished that she could ignore the world forever.

Nice as it was, she didn't want to fall asleep again. The world wasn't going to ignore her, so it was best to meet it on her terms. Stretching, she slowly pried herself out of her warm cocoon. Her skin cringed away from the air, which only served to wake her up further. She blinked a few times, chasing the sleep from her eyes. She looked around the circle of spires. They stood almost invisible against the sky, a patch of black that blocked her view of the stars. 

Turning, she looked at the tower behind her. Light from the moons illuminated this side; the colors she had seen in the setting sun were cast in a silver light. Pale pinks, blues, and yellows climbed up the side, not in bands of color, but as if some huge hand had painted them, stripes of color overlaying each other as far as she could see.

She rested her hand lightly on the side of the rock, trying to absorb some of the beauty. She held it there for five slow breaths then moved it around, her fingertips searching for imperfections in the smoothness of the column. Finding some, she grinned, took off her shoes, and began to climb. There weren't many crevices, and they weren't large, but she was patient, strong, and capable, and she slowly made her way up the side. She tried to stay on the lit side of the tower, but there were a couple times where she was forced to climb the black side, finding her way by touch alone. 

Aside from that little challenge, the climb was a fun diversion. She reached the top of the spire forty-five minutes after starting. Her shoulders and legs burned with the exertion, and she sprawled gracelessly on the stone littered top of the spire. After her muscles relaxed enough to agree to move again, she sat up and looked about. The top of the tower was almost perfectly flat, as were the tops of all the spires in the circle. A loose clutter of pebbles and rocks were scattered over the top in a strangely random pattern. She spent a few minutes idly wondering why there were rocks here, and not blown off into the sand below, and no sand picked up by the wind from the desert below. Unable to come to a conclusion, she quit worrying about it. The rocks were there. The sand was not. Live with it.

Kiley began exercising. The hazardous loose gravel underfoot wasn't cleared away. Instead, she used it as a challenge. Not only did it make footing precarious, which tested her balance, she tried to keep from moving a single pebble, which tested her precision. The exercise was silent again, the only noise the odd click of stone on stone as she failed in her mission. The dance ranged over the entire surface of the spire, dashing across the middle to linger on the edges. She dared the edges of the pillar with abandon, daring gravity to take her and smash her to bits on the ground below. A half hour passed before she slowed. She hadn't tired, but the suns were rising, and she wanted to watch light paint the land.

As light seeped back into the desert, the horizons expanded. Looking out to the edge of the world, she could see for miles. Miles, miles, and miles of sand, of dunes stretching before her in a drab beige sameness. But as the first sun crested the edge of the world, the spine of the dunes were etched in gold. A pattern of gold fire, reflected from the dunes, danced before her eyes, growing from a fine line to a bold stroke in a matter of seconds. The effect didn't last even a minute, but it was gorgeous while it lasted.

Below her, she could hear Knives awake. Well, she didn't actually hear him awake, but his bellow when he saw her discarded sleeping area echoed between the pillars and up to her. She sighed, turned, and walked over to the edge. Nothing like prickly plant people to ruin a perfectly good morning.

"Hey sleepyhead," she cried, waving. She could feel the fury of Knives' stare from way up in the air, and was glad she wasn't on the ground. "Sunrise is beautiful from up here!" she yelled cheerfully.

Which it was. The dust that was perpetually in the air refracted the light into a glorious array of golds, yellows, purples, and reds. They took over the sky, making it a bold painting of stripes of color. It was like the spires were a pale reflection of the glory of the morning sky, a permanent likeness. Unfortunately, the colors faded from the sky all too quickly, leaving the day to be baked brown by the light of the suns.

Skygazing done, she climbed down the pillar. Knives ignored her as he ate breakfast. She walked over to the pool and took a drink of water, then returned to her pack and folded up her blanket. She tousled her hair vigorously to dislodge the sand that had taken up residence between the follicles, then tried to smooth it down again. Absently she worried that it was growing too long, but dismissed the thought as she grabbed herself some food. 

She ate in silence, not thinking of anything much beyond the food she was shoving in her face. Bite, munch, chew ten times, swallow. Repeat until finished. She was well-practiced at not thinking anything at all, and now seemed like a time to renew old skills.

************************************************************************* 

Knives stared over at the world's most obnoxious woman. She seemed to be trying to destroy his remaining shreds of patience. When he woke up this morning and could not find her, his first reaction was one of justifiable rage. Then she stuck her fool head over the edge of that tower and had the audacity to be chipper. She must have known that he was upset. She should have climbed down from that damn rock, but instead she mouthed some blather about watching a sunrise, and prettiness.

Looking at her, he wondered what was passing through that weak excuse for a mind. Most likely, plans to drive him even crazier. As if it wasn't bad enough that he had to keep her mollified for her to teach him, he had to put up with all the crap she decided to put him through. Infuriating. 

He looked at the blank expression on her face and wondered what it hid. The expression itself was a work of art, giving away nothing even to his practiced eye. The eyes didn't move about, but stared down at the ground about ten feet ahead of her when she wasn't taking a bite. She didn't blink, save as an automatic response to the drying of the membranes. No muscles tensed or relaxed, save those she used while chewing. It was as if she wasn't thinking of anything at all.

He wondered where she had learned such an all-encompassing poker face. Such studied lapses of animation are hard learned, accompanied by suffering and pain, and suppression of personality. One doesn't have to keep all emotions and thoughts hidden if they conform to the norms and standards of those around you. Only the different, and then the twisted, need to learn such control. If he could only learn what she kept hidden, he could make her dance to his tune.

Thinking of tunes brought the one she had sung yesterday to mind. _Isn't it great to be alive? _Indeed. Words of despair, not hope. Words that are flung out as a last futile attempt to pretend that life is actually worth the time it takes to die. Words, words, words. It was a catchy tune, and one he had never heard before. New, just like so many things about her. 

He wondered where on this world she could have come from, that she would be so foreign to him. He hadn't heard of any killers that fit her description, and while he had been a bit--indisposed--recently, he would most likely have heard something of her. She appeared to be in her early twenties, which would mean that whatever traumas were in her past, they were not long buried. And yet, she had a stillness to her that spoke of acceptance of her deeds, and that was not something he expected in someone her age. 

That she was a killer he had no doubt. There was something in her eyes, an acknowledgement of mortality, perhaps, that no one who hasn't seen death possesses, an acceptance of the fragility of life, and an acceptance of personal violence. Her dance of the morning before assured him that she was more then capable of killing another, she was probably an artist. And if she was an artist of death, he should have heard of her, should have some inkling of why she ended up in his ship, and why she ran from him. But he hadn't, which meant what?

He needed to find out what shaped her into the person she was now, so he could shape her into the person he wanted her to be. Everyone has a key to their psyche, and though some may hide the key, or defend the locks, the key is still there, and so is the weakness. If he could only find the key, he knew that he would control her. Her self-control was a credit, but he would find out what he wanted in time.

And thinking of time, it was high time she started teaching him those little tricks of hers. 

"You will teach me now," he said.

"In a minute," Kiley said. "Let me finish breakfast first."

"Now, girl. You've put this off long enough," he said, walking over to her.

"Knives," she said, looking at him as he walked closer, "this is going to take a lot of energy. Now, energy drain probably won't be a problem for you, but it's not going to be helpful if I pass out in the middle of a link."

"Then eat faster," he told her, now standing in front of her. She rolled her eyes and made a show of chewing, big exaggerated motions that slowed down the mastication. He nudged her firmly with his foot. "Stop fooling around."

"Sorry," she drawled after swallowing. "Fooling around is part of my plan to piss you off. It's integral, I can't just stop, especially since it's working." She smiled up at him with an empty smile and empty eyes, the food in her hands momentarily forgotten.

Knives looked at her, his face almost expressionless, but still managing to betray his anger. Kiley could tell she was pushing her luck, but perversely, that made her only more inclined to try annoy the crap out of him. If ever a man needed to learn how to deal with the fact that life pisses you off, it was the one before her. 

"You do not want to make me angry," he said finally. His voice was quiet, yet managed to convey a feeling of doom. Which might have actually meant something to her if she hadn't said the same thing time after time.

"Actually, I do want to make you angry. I want to make you so mad you explode with rage, do one of your little energy-blasting tricks and rearrange the landscape. Or the moonscape, or whatever sort of scape you fancy. I want you to get so mad you do everything you can to get rid of the annoyance. And then, when I'm still around after your little temper tantrum, maybe you'll try to find a new way of dealing with the things that irritate you. 'Cause let's face it: you have a teensy tendency to overreact." That said, she picked up the last bite of her breakfast and popped it in her mouth. 

Then she looked up at Knives. The look of apoplexy on his face was absolutely precious. She would bet that no one had ever said anything even remotely like that to him before. Of course, most people were a lot more impressed with his potential for planet-destroying power then they should have been. She flashed him an impish little grin, and said "Now, before you work yourself into an aneurysm, let's get to the interesting part. It's time for you to learn a few tricks."

*************************************************************************

Knives wrestled his with his anger, but finally got it under control. At the moment he didn't care about the human. Her taunts were making her expendable. What he didn't want to do was hurt this precious oasis. The life that was so precariously poised on the edge between existence and disaster would be destroyed if he indulged in his desire to annihilate this pest. His eyes darted to the spring and the plants that managed to cling to the edges, and he absorbed the sight, using it to calm him and remind him that there were things in this world worth saving.

Finally he bled off enough of his rage to be able to look at the human again. If she had any sense, she would cower before the anger that still remained in his gaze, but instead she smiled. Smiled, as if his anger was something she could dismiss! For all her tough words, Knives knew that he could destroy her utterly. He decided then that her blithe dismissal of that fact was her error, and need not concern him. Allowing her to make him angry didn't serve his purposes.

Kiley stood and walked closer to the middle of the oasis, stopping about twenty feet from the spring. She seated herself in the same position as two days ago, and Knives followed suit. He knew she wouldn't need to correct his posture this time, and put out his hand for her to do that link thing.

Kiley looked at his hand like it was something foul. She lightly grabbed his wrist and placed his hand in his lap.

"We'll start with theory," she said, "and get to linking later."

"Theory?" asked Knives. "What are you talking about?"

"What? Did you think that this sort of thing is all flash and no substance? All action and no thought?" she asked, incredulous.

Knives responded, "All you need to do, human, is teach me the important things. I don't need a human teacher--"

In a fraction of a second Kiley went from an amused girl sitting in front of him to a killer. Knives barely had time to note the change in her eyes before he was throwing himself backward, out of the reach of the knife that appeared in her hand. She swept it around in an arc that would have torn out his throat if he were a human. As it was, a thin line was beginning to sting high on his chest where the blade had caught him.

He had never seen a human move that fast, had never seen a human prepare themselves to kill that fast. He got his hand to the gun at his hip and had pulled it out of the holster, but noticed something that stopped him from pulling the trigger. Aside from that first attack, she hadn't moved. He arm was still suspended at the end of the arc that would have killed him. He glanced at her eyes and saw nothing; they were as empty as the eyes of a corpse. 

He watched her, finger on the trigger of his gun, ready to fire if she made a move. Her eyes stayed empty, seeing nothing as time began again. First one heartbeat passed, then two, each stretching out in an adrenaline fueled expansion of time. 

Then she blinked, and life came back in her eyes all in a rush, filling them so completely that Knives almost began to doubt that they had been empty at all. She looked at her hand and seemed surprised to see it hanging there, holding a knife. She blinked hard a couple times, visibly trying to accept what she saw, then replaced it in her boot sheath. 

"Um," she said, clearly at a loss for words. She didn't look at him, but interlaced her fingers and started at them. 

Knives waited for her to say more, perhaps an explanation, or an excuse, or anything to fill the taut silence. But she didn't. She just stared at her hands, folded tight as if she was trying to keep them from betraying her again.

What the hell set her off? He cast his mind over the conversation, trying to find a clue as to what could possibly have elicited such a dramatic response. It couldn't have been his attitude; compared to some of the things he had said he was being polite. He looked at Kiley quizzically, then decided to experiment.

"Teacher," he said quietly, prepared for anything.

Except, perhaps, what happened. She exploded out of her seat and rushed him, somehow managing to knock his gun out of the way before he could fire. She grabbed his neck and started to squeeze. To say that Knives was shocked would be an understatement. She had moved so fast that he couldn't react. It was impossible for a human, and he would have spent more time denying what had happened except he needed to pry her fingers off his neck. 

He grabbed her wrists and pulled them away from his neck. Looking in her eyes, the empty expression was back, but he decided absently that it wasn't so much empty as if her mind was looking at something else and didn't need to use the eyes at the moment. As soon as he felt her grip begin to loosen he threw her off of him. She landed hard on the sand, making no effort to break her fall.

This time when sense returned to her eyes they didn't show shame, but anger. 

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, rage causing her to shake.

Knives leaned over to pick up his gun but didn't take his eyes off her. He held it loosely in his hand and didn't respond. Instead, he sat down cross-legged in the sand and waited.

Staring at him, Kiley couldn't believe what she saw. After she just tried to kill him, twice, he wanted to her to continue the morning's lesson? She fumed for a few moments, mentally raging at what he had done, but keeping her mouth shut because she was ashamed of her reaction. Finally, she acceded to his silent demand and sat before him, ready to pass on some of what she knew. Maybe she could pretend that nothing had happened, and that would make it true.

"We will," she started, then paused to clear her throat. "We will start the morning with some theory. It's just as important to know why something works as knowing how to do it."

The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful, at least in the matter of physical events. Mentally, it was another story altogether as Knives was introduced to a world he hadn't known existed. He had used his mental powers like a child, and now he was being shown the wide world of the possible. Kiley talked at length on the basics of her mental tricks, of energy waves, bonds, and links. These were the elements that the mind could affect, and it was the various ways of manipulating them that multiplied the number of things one could do. 

There were almost no known limits to what the mind could achieve. There were a few things that could not yet be done, but it was not some much because they were impossible as they had effects that could not be controlled. It was a lot like fusion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It was possible, but uncontrollable, and therefore a rather pointless endeavor, at least until a means of regulating the energy output was discovered.

What the mind could not do was overrule the most basic laws of thermodynamics. Energy could not be made or destroyed, which meant that every action had some sort of consequence. For instance, you could potentially stop the air molecules before you, thus creating an invisible wall. It would, however, be a very cold wall, as stopping the motion of the molecules would decrease the temperature of the molecules to absolute zero. Then you would have to do something with the energy that you pulled from the molecules. Otherwise, you would make your mind explode. The amount of energy it had to pull from the air to stop it was more then it the mind could hold, but wasn't more then it could redirect. Plus, the super-cold wall of air quickly attracted the water vapor in the air, making a instant, but fragile wall of ice. If the ice shattered, it was often bonded strongly enough to the air to shatter the wall as well. 

After listing the various problems, Kiley gave a solution that would fix them. Undoubtedly, things grew more complicated then they would be at first glance, and Knives began to understand why they were starting with theory. She explained that the most common answer to that particular problem was a doubled trick, or one where you pull the energy from one plane of air and use that energy to supercharge surrounding molecules, and separate the two by a creating a small vacuum. That gets rid of water vapor, uses the energy, and keeps your mind intact. 

Kiley described many problems like that one, and gave solutions to most of them. Some of them, like flying, had not been figured out yet, and she told him that as well, pointing out the facets of the problems that still were unanswered. It wasn't so much that there were laws of physics that could not be broken, but that the energy levels involved were great enough to overwhelm the mind before the energy could be transferred elsewhere.

Knives began to realize that there was a lot more to be learned then he had anticipated. When she had opened the morning with her comment about theories, he had assumed that she was going to be making up nonsense to drag out the instruction. He had never found it hard to manipulate the things around him, and had always figured that was because he was a plant, and not because what he was doing was unsophisticated. There were so many more elegant ways to manipulate the world if her theories were true.

He had not spent much time figuring out why his mind could affect the world around him, but her explanations of energy manipulation made sense and meshed with his experience. That he could have harmed his mind had never entered his thoughts. A trickle of uneasiness made itself felt as he contemplated some of the actions he had taken, and how lucky he had been to have not destroyed himself. He comforted himself with the knowledge that he had a superior mind, and could obviously handle much more then a human could before burning himself out.

For the most part, though, he dwelled only on what she said. For all her hatred of the word, she was a good teacher, intelligent, thoughtful, and concisely delivering information in a easily digestible stream. She kept the lesson paced evenly, dwelling on subjects perhaps a little longer then he needed to hear, but not annoyingly so. She was used to dealing with humans, so he didn't make an issue of the fact that she was teaching him a little too slowly. That day.

Knives was also surprised to find himself interested. He had believed that whatever this human might know would be of little real interest to him; that she would know a few tricks that he could strip from her and a lot of boring information that he wouldn't care about. That seemed to be the pattern for humans, a few bright sparks that made them interesting, smothered by the minutia of boredom they surrounded themselves in and called their lives. Instead, she stayed frightfully interesting the entire morning, capturing his interest and not letting it go. 

It wasn't only the subject matter, although that was captivating enough, warnings and basic theories as it was. The basic theories alone were enough to set his mind aflame with the possibilities of greater things. There was so much that was possible, so much that he had never dreamed was possible, that he could hardly believe it. Whatever stroke of fortune had placed him in his ship, whatever had made it possible for him to sit here and learn from this girl, he blessed it. With even today's lesson he was going to have a much easier time wiping out the vermin. But no, it was more then just what he was learning. They way she taught it, the way her face came alive with the love of her subject served to draw him in even deeper. She taught him, and he knew that somehow he not only was learning such wonderful things, but that she was an expert in this field. For the first time in a very, very long time, Knives was more then interested in something. He was actually excited.

Yes, with the possibilities introduced by today's lesson, and finding her key, this morning was quite profitable indeed.

They stopped the training for lunch, both returning to their respective "sides" of the oasis. Knives spent his time thinking over what she had said, his nimble mind making leaps of logic that he ached to put to the test. That he didn't was a testament both to his intelligence, and Kiley's strenuous warnings. But he didn't let the inability to practice slow his imagination. With just the little he had learned that morning, he was already trying to refine the techniques that he had used to bind the Gung-Ho Guns to him. With any luck, he would be able to avoid any more incidents like that one with Chapel. Lost in his thoughts, he missed the inner turmoil on the other side of the oasis.

Kiley wasn't thinking very swiftly at all. Depression laced her thoughts, dragging them through her mind as slowly as possible. Every concept seemed weighted with lead, and only her anger with herself kept her from lapsing into despair. As much as she tried to ignore what had happened that morning, it would not leave her. 

Dammit, she was sure that she was over that. Why couldn't that have been just one more of the things she had left behind? Why did it have to follow her here, to a place where she finally had a chance to build a future? She knew that it was her fault, that her reaction was symptomatic of a hole in her psyche. She could blame her reaction on stress, could say that she had only been falling into an earlier pattern of behavior, but that would be a lie. 

She wasn't better. The veneer that she has laboriously built over that gaping hole in her soul wasn't as thick as she had thought it was. Instead of being a strong foundation on which to build a life, it was thin ice, and cracking beneath her weight already. Much as she ached to blame her reaction on the events of the past few months, she was at least strong enough to not lie to herself. She was still cracked, still not quite right in the head. 

She wished she knew why it was so hard to get better, to heal the part of her that was still so raw, even after all this time. She was trying so hard to get better, but what good were her efforts when a single word could undo then all? A single word. She couldn't even force herself to think it.

Come on, she thought. Come on, you can do it. It's just a word. Not only is it just a word, but it's a word with a completely different meaning here. Not only that, but he couldn't touch you anymore years ago, you made sure of that. She tried to convince herself that the word was harmless, that it was just a name for a simple occupation, but she couldn't. Her mind danced around the word, trying to protect itself from it my throwing up synonyms, by embracing the concept wordlessly, but in the end it was overwhelmed by the need of the conscious to confront a personal demon.

Teacher.

Her mind drew away from the word as quickly as possible. Cold sweat broke out of her body as the syllables echoed between her ears. She kept herself from shaking, but only the indomitable willpower that had allowed her to think the word could control the reaction. With the single-mindedness of a child picking at a scab, she returned to the word, determined to confront her demon before it could be used against her.

Teacher.

Her stomach turned, and she set down her lunch. She wouldn't be eating for awhile. Fixing this problem wasn't going to be won with a battle, but with any luck she would be winning the war before Knives had a chance to do that to her again.

Her anger tried to turn from her shame to the way that Knives had manipulated her, but she wouldn't let it. She knew when her mind was trying to avoid an issue, and also knew that getting mad at Knives would be a waste of time. He was only being him horrible self. No, what she needed was to concentrate on her own problem. Her problem was what she needed to focus on, her problem. . . 

Crap. 

She dragged her mind back to the word it hated so much, forced it to think it twice in punishment for wandering.

Teacher. Teacher.

She couldn't control the shakes this time, but she did keep them in her hands. By folding them and placing them in her lap, she could pretend she was the problem didn't exist, but she was finally moving beyond lying to herself that much. Her gorge rose, even though her stomach was empty, and she spent a minute keeping the bile in her stomach, then cursed as she realized that her body had stopped her from confronting the problem again.

Depression crashed in again. Who was she kidding? If she could fix this problem, it would be gone by now. Years, years she had been trying to kick the killing rage, to confront the fear that the word inspired in her, and it obviously hadn't worked. She was broken, a broken excuse for a human being, unable to be fit into polite society. . . No.

She stopped the self-pity. Maybe she wasn't fixed yet, but she wasn't broken. Not while she could still fight. Determination hardened her, gave her what passed for hope in her life. More people then she could remember had tried to break her, some over a period of years, some over a period of months, and none of them had succeeded. She would rather die then let Knives break her with a word, after less then a week in her company. She would break when she said so, not before, and certainly not because of a word. She was stronger then that. 

In her resolution, she forced herself to think the word again. Teacher. It came out easier this time, with a little less pain. Now she relaxed, and let her mind shy away from the word. She called the battle a win, but knew that there was still a lot more of the war ahead. Most importantly, though, she again began to believe that it was a war that could be won.

Still shaky, but determined to go on, Kiley walked to the center of the oasis and waited for Knives. She stood there for a minute, waiting for him to notice her, then sat down and got ready to wait for a while. He was lost in thought, and she took the time that his preoccupation offered to watch him. 

She wondered what person, where, had decided to make plants so damned cute. Looking at him, seeing his eyes sparkle with delight, it was very hard to imagine that he was a murderous monster who lived only to exterminate the human race. He looked more like a child who has just been informed that wishes really do come true. The curve of his jaw, the arch of his nose, the height of his cheekbones, all combined to make him physically gorgeous. 

His mind was obviously moving at great speeds. She watched him smile, a brief flicker at the corners of his mouth that turned into a soft frown as whatever idea that had caught his fancy was seen flawed. He ate absently, chewing slowly, precisely, sometimes forgetting to swallow for a moment. It was so incredibly cute she found herself lost in enjoyment, merely watching him. 

Nothing made her want to smile as much as seeing someone else innocently happy. While it wasn't likely that there was much that was innocent about Knives' happiness, what she could see seemed innocuous enough. She could have obsessed, tried to figure out just what he was so darn happy about, but after a moment's heavy thought decided that she had been through enough today. If she could sit here and pretend that things were alright for a minute or two, it would probably be ok. She didn't need to destroy herself trying to stop a monster quite yet. Now, now there was time for her to pretend that he was happy to be learning, and that she was happy to be helping him learn, and that it was just a beautiful day in the desert. No harm anywhere, no harm now, no harm in the future. She leaned back on her elbows and watched Knives, her eyes half-lidded against the glare and the heat, a smile touching her lips as she wallowed in reflected joy. 

The day grew a little older, the suns moved a degree in the sky, and Knives finally tore himself out of his reverie. The first thing he saw was that woman smirking at him, and anger instantly rose, tainting the happiness he had felt a heartbeat before. How dare she sit there and laugh at him? He rose slowly and stalked towards the center of the circle. She didn't move, but stayed smiling at him as he approached. 

He drew nearer and noticed that she was sleeping. 

How interesting. After what had happened this morning, he wouldn't have thought she would fall asleep with a smile on her face. He settled back on his heels and looked at her. He hadn't had much of a chance to actually look at the human yet, and was curious. For such an interesting vermin on the inside, she looked normal enough on the outside. A few freckles had formed across the bridge of her nose that hadn't been there when he first saw her in the ship. She was too skinny, her cheeks a little hollow, her skin a little too tight over her face, but that was no change. Looking, he wasn't sure if there was any fat on her body. Everything he could see was skin stretched tight over muscle and bone. Her sandy brown hair was short and unfashioned, and looked like it was growing out of a crew cut, all shaggy follicles the same length. Her mouth was relaxed, the lips full and pink with a little gap between them. 

All in all, not completely ugly, for a human, but definitely could have been better. He shifted on his heels and she woke up.

"See anything you like?" she asked without opening her eyes.

"Like to kill, perhaps," he replied absently. "But that can wait until later."

"It's good to know you have your priorities straight," she said, then opened her eyes. He was still very close, looming over her.

"You were smiling," he said, slightly accusing.

"You were cute," she responded, rolling her shoulders and stretching before sitting up. "I'm just a sucker for seeing people who look happy."

Knives looked at her oddly. "You smile when other people are happy?"

Kiley's brow wrinkled. "Most of the time. Why? Do happy people make you sad?"

"No," he said shortly. A pause, then "I don't see many happy people."

"Well, most people fighting for their lives aren't happy. Or at least, most sane people," she amended quickly. "There's always a few twisted souls who think that fighting for their lives is some sort of proof of adequacy. Are they the sort of happy people you see?" she asked solicitously.

He shot her a look she couldn't quite read but interpreted as dirty. "I only know one person, my brother. Things like you are vermin, not people."

"Oh, ouch," she said, laughing. "Stop that. You and your prejudices need to come to an understanding with the real world. Humans may not be the best of people, but we are people. I'm sure, somewhere out there in the big, wide universe there are better people, and there are worse people. And here on this planet, well, we have plants as the better people, and humans as the worse people, but just because we aren't as sublime as you are doesn't make us not people." She said the whole thing with a smile, but watched sadly as Knives grew angrier throughout her speech.

"You are not people. You are evil, destroying, horrible monsters that destroy everything you touch. There is no excuse, no justification for your continued existence."

She contemplated that, then stuck her tongue out at him, then poked him in the side.

"Feeling destroyed yet?"

Knives growled, and Kiley was a little sorry, but it passed.

"Sorry," she apologized anyway. "Let's get back to the learning."

Knives sat down in front of her, his anger disappearing into that disquieting calm of his. Kiley looked at him closely before deciding that he was safe enough to talk to for the moment.

"Now we're going to link," she stated. "We aren't going to do anything fancy, but what we will do is explore some of the concepts I introduced this morning."

He put his hand out and she gingerly took it, touching fingertips to fingertips as lightly as she could. Slowly, she reached out with her mind and established the link. Carefully, she manipulated the energies of the world and coaxed the air into a small breeze that blew against their faces. After a few seconds she finished and broke the link. 

Knives opened his eyes and started at her incredulously. "That's it?"

"That's it what?" she asked. "That's it, it's easy, or that's it, it's tiny?"

"Both," he said.

"Yeah, that's it then." She looked at him, daring him to say something more.

Knives was learning lots of things. He wisely changed the subject. "Am I learning anything else today?" he asked impatiently.

She leaned back and ran her fingers through the sand, rubbing the feel of his skin from her fingertips. "That depends."

"It depends on what?" he demanded.

"It depends on whether or not you can do what I just showed you."

"Of course I can," he replied indignantly. He started to show her, only to realize that creating a breeze wasn't as simple as it had seemed. He tried to grasp the air and push it in the direction he wanted, but the harder he tried the more it slipped away. He knew how to do this, he remembered how it was done, but now that he attempted to perform the simplest of tasks he was stumped.

But he would rather wrestle with the problem for an hour then ask her to show him again. He closed his eyes, then stopped trying to grab onto the air, realizing its current futility. Instead he took a moment to review what she had done. First, she defined an area that she wished to affect, then. . . how to describe what she did? It wasn't grabbing the air, but more. . . what?

He stopped and tried to put into words a concept he only barely grasped. The memory existed in his mind, but it was a memory out of context, out of his ability to define. She hadn't tried to grab the air, she hadn't grabbed anything at all. Instead, she wove the energies into a net and pulled that in the direction she wanted the air to move. The net pushed the air ahead of it, and a breeze was formed.

With a snide little smile for the easiness of the answer, and the speed with which he arrived at it, Knives attempted the trick. He found the energy of the air and squished it together into something that almost looked somewhat like a net and pulled it towards him. Or at least, he tried. The stupid mess wouldn't move. He stared at it with his mind, tried to force the energies into a net, then let them go when he realized that all he had was a useless tangle. 

He tried again, this time taking more care with the initial weaving of the energies, and as he pulled it towards him, he was rewarded with a faint breath of air. Opening his eyes, he was surprised by what he saw. 

The first thing he noticed was that the woman was no longer sitting in front of him. He craned his neck around, looking for her, and finally caught a glimpse of her near the spring. The second thing he noticed was the lateness of the hour. The suns were already near the horizon. The shadows of the pillars streaked across the oasis like bars on a window, the light beginning to take on an orange hue that heralded the end of the day. What happened?

"What did you do?" he called out, accusingly.

"Nothing," she hollered back. "You went into a trance. It's normal; don't worry."

It took Knives a couple tries to stand up. His body was stiff, and he realized the importance of the seating position. When he finally made it to his feet he walked over to where she was sitting.

"It's not normal for me," he said.

"How many times have you learned from a link before?" she asked, turning from the castle she was building in the sand. Knives shot her a withering look but said nothing, so she continued. "You learned how to make an energy web in a trance, a link trance. The most common way of accessing the information is in a trance as well. The mind tries to replicate the learning situation to facilitate the retrieval of information."

"Are you saying that I'll be falling into these trances after every lesson?" he asked.

"That is entirely up to you," she said, turning again to her sand castle. "It depends on how hard you fight to stay out of trance. If I were you , though, I wouldn't worry about it. Most people stop falling into a trance as they progress in learning. It's only while the mind is wrestling with massively unfamiliar concepts that it focuses all energies on the learning process."

"Why do some people continue to trance?" he asked, grasping at what she had only implied.

"Some people have a very difficult time with the concepts. Their waking mind might not be able to accept them, or they just might need to devote all their energies to the formation of the trick," she said.

"Do you need to trance?" he asked, looking at the castle she had made. It was all straight lines, perfectly straight, parallel lines without a grain of sand out of place, save for a lopsided circle placed carelessly inside the layers of walls.

"Did I look like I was in a trance when I put those people in stasis?" she asked waspishly. "I haven't needed to trance for a very long time."

Knives didn't respond. He didn't like the vulnerability of a trance.

"Did you trance?" he asked instead, preferring to keep her talking, if only to keep from obsessing over the potential problems of a trance.

"Once," she said softly. "I tranced once."

"Are you so smart?" Knives asked sarcastically.

"No, just motivated," she responded before sweeping the castle to the ground.

*************************************************************************

Song copyright The Lawnmowers. I think it's The Goat, but I could be mistaken.


	8. Lunch in the sun

I own nothing remotely Trigun-ish.

I like reviews (hint, hint).

************************************************************************

The next morning was a little calmer. Knives refrained from pushing at her sanity, and Kiley refrained from teasing Knives. Well, mostly refrained. She was trying to be good, though, which should count for something.

Instead, they acted like calm and reasonable adults indulging in consensual acts of information transference. The topic of the day was the mechanics of a link information transfer. Kiley explained theory, meshing biorhythms and whatnot, and Knives listened patiently, passively absorbing knowledge. Only rarely did he feel the need to ask a question, as her teaching was clear and well presented. Instead, he found himself letting his mind wander off into thoughts of what he could do with this link business.

All in all, though, things went well until the afternoon lesson.

This time, Knives' assignment was to link with Kiley. He started out not having any success, and every time he tried to link and failed, he grew angrier. The reasons behind his failure were unknown, but Kiley could guess at his problem. Either he had been daydreaming during an important part of the lecture, which wasn't very probable, or he didn't like the idea of opening his mind to a human. What he was supposed to do was link his mind with hers and deposit a simple memory into her mind. He kept mentally pulling back before forming the link, unable to make his mind lightly touch hers.

"Will you stop trying to block my link," he growled out after yet another failed attempt. 

"I'm not the one sabotaging this," she said calmly, trying to decrease his frustration. Think calm, be calm, keep the psycho happy.

"Of course you are," he erupted, very much not calm. "Your stupid human mind keeps slipping away as I attempt to bridge the mental gap."

"I'm not the one slipping away. You seem to be having some problems making your mind actually touch the mind of a human. I suppose that it was alright for you when your mind was dominating the thoughts of a person, that you could tolerate that degree of intimacy because you were in charge and causing pain to your subject, but now that you are only supposed to share, you're having a bit of a problem."

"I'm not the one with the problem," Knives insisted. "If your mind would stop dancing away from mine I would have made this stupid link already."

"Maybe if you trance," she offered, but Knives interrupted her before she could say another word.

"I will not trance again," he said, his eyes icy.

Kiley rolled her eyes and said, "You aren't less of a prodigy if you have to trance."

"You only tranced once, correct? If a human can absorb the concepts without retreating to a mental realm, I can do it."

"Knives, don't measure your progress by mine. I didn't learn the right way, the safe way, of the way I should have. I stressed myself to the max when I could have learned better and more safely if I had only allowed myself to slip into trance."

He obviously wasn't mollified. If she could do it, he could do it, only massively better, because he was a plant. Kiley suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. It was either because he was a plant, or because he was a male. She had seen enough crap in her life as a result of the last condition to be suspicious. Whatever his problem was, she could see that getting mad was Knives' way of dealing with his failure, and since he was a great-and-mighty-plant-man and she was a low-and-simple-human, the failure must be her fault. She debated pointing that chain of reasoning out to him, but refrained. If he hadn't figured that out yet, now was not the time to draw attention to his shortcomings.

Since trying to do it the right way was getting him nowhere, Knives decided that she was teaching him wrong.

"It's really too bad I have to stoop to learning from a human. If another plant were teaching me, I'm sure that the information would be passed along in a much more rational fashion."

"Will you quit acting like such an asshole?" she responded. "You would think that I was deserving of just a little respect, for no other reason then I obviously know more about this sort of thing then you do. And if I say you don't know how to link, I'm not going to be lying to you. And if you would just stow the attitude for a few hours I might get to finish this thankless task with my sanity intact."

Knives snorted. "You have no sanity. Teacher."

Kiley managed to control herself, barely, but the outrush of rage was impossible to ignore. Her hands twitched in her lap, but she managed to keep them from his neck by sheer force of will. Looks like chanting the word to herself all morning long was a good idea after all.

"Bastard. And you say humans are evil."

Their conversation was rapidly devolving into an argument. Both leaned forward and stared angrily into the each other's eyes.

"All humans are evil and deserve to die," he said coldly. "All you do is use, and take, and kill, and pollute, and destroy."

"Whine, whine, whine," she said, her voice rising. "You use that crap you went through as a child as an excuse for everything bad you've done in you entire life. I killed untold millions of sleepers on the Seeds ships? I was abused as a child. You decide that all humans must die? They abused me as a child. Grow up, Knives. It wasn't as bad as you keep bitching about."

"How dare you presume to know what I went through as a child? You act like the horrible acts of brutality I suffered were nothing, to be ignored and overcome just because I feel like it? What humans did to me cannot be forgotten or forgiven." Knives snarled.

And then he kissed her.

As far as kisses go, it was nothing spectacular. It wasn't as if Knives had ever had much practice, myths and rumors of his relationship with Legato notwithstanding. It was mostly a firm meeting of the mouths, a hard, quick smash of lips on lips. There was no passion, no attempt to soften the blow. It was a kiss in the same fashion that rape is like sex; the mechanics were the same, but they were used only to cause terror. Kiley was overwhelmed.

But it wasn't the kiss that assaulted Kiley's senses. Knives had finally figured out to link, and his first transfer wasn't comprised of puppies and roses. Images poured through her mind, memories assaulted her senses as she was forced to relive some of Knives' most hated memories, the memories of his youth, and his abuse at the hands of the first humans he ever knew. That he had to be reliving them as well was scant consolation, as time and familiarity have a way of dimming the impact of memory. That she didn't have such defenses meant they caused him less pain then they caused her.

Thanks to Knives' near-perfect memory, there was no distortion, no loss of detail. What she experienced was close enough to the actual experience as was possible. She could feel the pain of every blow, could feel the fear that immobilized him as he found he couldn't escape. The metallic odor of the floor lingered in her nostrils as she felt her face pressed hard against it. The sound of his flesh being struck, and the accompanying fresh jolts of agony. The need to not cry out, wails stifled by shame and pride. The physical pain of the beatings that lingered for days, refreshed again and again, never going away.

And the emotional pain the words caused was poured on her soul like acid, etching deep chasms of pain that seeped rage at the edges. The hurts of the body were bad enough, but to be called the things that he was called, the words that were used to try to destroy him, just because he was different, just because he was better, just because humans felt threatened by the things they could not control. To be called a monster because he could do things better, could perform dangerous tasks faster and with a higher level of precision then a human ever could, to be hated because he was superior, these things damaged the very fabric of his soul. The denial of any sort of basic humanity, and the assumption of the mantle of monster seemed the only response to such horrible beatings. If being human meant even the possibility of acting in such a horrible manner, he would never, ever wish to be human.

She felt his mind grapple with the concepts of hatred and rage, and knew when it came to the decision to use the evils of the humans against them, to destroy them as they would destroy the superior plants. She was forced to watch as he realized that the time to kill the humans off was before they awoke, before more monsters arose to try to kill him, and most importantly before they tried to kill Vash. Maybe, somehow, he did something to deserve this, but Vash? Never. He made it his mission in life to protect that empty-headed idiot, but was angry that no one ever felt the need to protect him. They needed someone to protect them, and Rem wasn't equal to the task. She and her never-killing, ultra-pacifistic view of the world wouldn't be able to keep them safe. It did make her one of the humans worth saving, if she might actually abstain from the vermin pattern of violence, but leaving the escape pod had been her idea. He didn't mourn her.

She felt that he did mourn the loss of his innocence before his second birthday, and felt his anger when he took his revenge on the humans for what they did to him, and for what they allowed to happen. If no one would protect him, if no one would save him, he would make sure that no one would ever need to, ever again.

The pain of months was transferred to her in moments, and then Knives broke the link. Kiley swayed in her seat, rocked by what she had seen. Her eyes were confused, glassy, and her mouth opened and closed a few times with no noise coming out. He stared at her, pleased with the reaction. He could see that he had staggered her, could see that her confidence had been shaken. Her hands were clenched into fists, but that could not hide their subtle tremors. 

That he had managed to figure out that stupid link without having to trace gratified him. The human had been so sure that he would need to fall into that weakness, that escape from reality, but he had proved her wrong. He didn't need to be highly motivated, he just needed to be pissed.

An idea came to him. Now was probably one of the best times to break her, to destroy that damnable self-confidence that was annoying him so much. She didn't lose control like this easily, and if she was already shaken, she might crack with the right sort of pressure.

He leaned forward and said softly, "Now do you know why I hate humans so much? Do you realize why I will never stop until all of you flawed vermin are erased from this universe?"

He paused, then gave the killing blow. "Having problems with what you witnessed? A little harsh for your unprotected mind? 'The depth of the link depends on the intimacy of contact made.' Remember that, teacher?"

The reaction was swift, but it wasn't the one he desired. Rage flashed across her features right before her hands shot out and affixed themselves to the sides of his face. They were followed a fraction of a second later by her lips as she kissed him back.

Kiley's kiss was better, softer, and deeper. Instead of a press of lips on lips, it was a meeting of mouths and tongues, a soft melding of flesh to flesh. It was enticing, electric, and designed to arouse passion. For all that the technique was superior, the effect was the same. Her link was deeper, and she used every part of it.

Kiley forced the memories of her childhood on Knives, the horrors she lived through for over a decade. The emotional, physical, mental, and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather tore through his mind, leaving pain and terror behind. Her memory was not as exact as Knives, so he was spared having to relive her experiences, but that gift paled in light of the mass of memories that descended on him. Memories comprised of still pictures, actions filled by emotions, still shots of her life within the context of pain.

Perfection in all things always expected, never achieved. No matter how good she did, how perfectly she acted, he always found a fault. Starting from the time she was three years old she was subjected to the expectations of perfection and failure. Constantly forced to achieve more while every achievement was subsequently ignored, living where action and inaction both led to pain. Living where her existence was tolerated only because it provided a convenient outlet for her stepfather's rage.

The first time she was beaten was on the eve of her mother's wedding. Before leaving to mount her mother, her stepfather battered her nearly into unconsciousness because she had fidgeted during the wedding. A three year old child, and she was beaten for fidgeting, as if this were somehow not something that a little girl would be expected to do.

The first time she was sexually abused she was seven years old. Her stepfather accused her of being dirty, of someone like her enticing him to her bed with heat-filled glances and the way she showed off her legs. She never tried to tell him that the only heat in her eyes was hate, and that she only wore the clothes he picked out for her. It wouldn't make any difference. The memory of the rain outside the window, falling like bars that trapped her here, the memory of the bare branches on the trees holding her in.

The first time she realized that all this terror had nothing to do with her, personally? When she was eight, and her stepfather loosed a stream of invective towards her father as he cut into her back, some light cuts, some heavy enough that she could feel the hot trickle of blood seep out from the under the blade of the knife as he drew it across her back. The shame that knowledge released, that she wasn't even evil enough to deserve this treatment, that it was her father that caused her agony. 

The first and only time she tranced, first the relief she felt as she had managed to perform her first mental trick, then the quick rush of pain as she returned to her body. Her stepfather, her teacher, had used the time that her mind wasn't attached to her body to cover it with paper cuts and rub lemon juice on her skin. Silent pain, invisible yet excruciating. The words whispered in her ear of what would happen next time, and the determination to never, ever need to trance again.

She shared with him the pain that words can cause, the constant put-downs and attempts to destroy her mind, her self-esteem, her pride, her very soul. She shared with him the firsts, and the seconds, and all the other memories that stretched on into infinity, fifteen years of terror, pain, and heart-wrenching horror, fifteen long, loveless years of her childhood. The span was almost ten times longer then Knives had spent being abused, and her abuser had been much more inventive and had a much freer hand with her treatment. 

She gave him all those years, a poisoned gift from her soul. Memories that she tried to deny, that she could deny in the light of day but came back to haunt her in the still of the night. Memories that time could not soften, could not make pretty or better. Memories of a sick and twisted time that somehow, amazingly, produced a sick and twisted woman. Memories of a time where everyone and everything seemed to conspire to destroy her, a time where all she had was her pride. Her pride, her only defense, and her only shield, but it was a thin thing, like ice on a pond. But it never cracked, it never broke, and she emerged from that time unbroken. She was never broken, no matter how hard people tried.

Then she broke the link and sat back, sick at heart, both from reliving the memories and from her actions. Knives may have asked for it, but no one should have to live through what she had. How many times had she told herself that to have weakened now and forced it on another? Shame and guilt filled her, turning the rage she had felt to ashes.

Knives didn't move for a second, then he turned and vomited in the sand beside him. The urge to throw up didn't abate for almost a minute, dragged out by the despicable nature of the memories she had "shared" with him. After the heaves ended he pushed himself back up and faced her.

"You're an alien, aren't you," he accused. "None of that happened here."

She blinked, not expecting this. "Well, you weren't born here, either," she pointed out. 

"How did you get here?" he demanded. The ultimatum was diluted by the green cast to his face.

Kiley didn't say anything for a minute. When Knives started to make noises of protest, she waved him down. Finding the right words was hard, emotions crowding the facts, clamoring to be included. What finally emerged was stripped of everything unessential, and came out in a flat, tired voice. "I died. And after years of service, doing what I was told, trying to do the right thing, I ended up here. With you. Which goes to show that there really is a hell."

Knives wasn't pleased when Kiley fell silent. He waited impatiently for her to say more, to elaborate on how the hell she got in his ship. Time slipped on, seconds pulled out like taffy, stretching beyond belief but never breaking. Kiley stared down at her hands, fingers laced in her lap, carefully avoiding anything resembling eye-contact as she grappled with her emotions.

Sometimes it the little things that are hard. You can make it through a lot of difficult times, a lot of troubles and keep your cool, but one small irritation and you lose it. This was one of those moments. She could handle that she had ended up on this horrible planet. She could deal with ending up in Knives' ship, and the subsequent need to deal with the psychotic plant, and she was managing the need to teach him how to be a better sociopath. But having to admit that she wasn't born here? It was hitting her harder then it should. 

Unfortunately, just because you can rationalize your problem, it doesn't mean you can make it go away. Kiley sat there, fighting with her mind, fighting depression, and fighting a damnable urge to cry. Cry? She never cried. Why did she want to cry now? What was wrong with her? Her eyes fixed on her fingernails, and she idly recognized the need to clean them as her emotions fought within her.

"That's it? That's all you're going to say?" Knives demanded when the silence grew too thick. He wondered what was wrong with her now. All the fire seemed to have left her. Inexplicably, he began to feel a flicker of guilt. 

Guilt? What did he have to feel guilty over? He was a plant, a superior form of being. Superior beings never screwed up. The human must just be broken. Nevertheless, the feeling of guilt didn't go away.

Kiley didn't respond. No thoughtful, considered response, no smart-assed reply designed to infuriate, nothing. She just sat there, staring at nothing. Knives grabbed her shoulder and chin, pulling her towards him and her face up until their eyes met. He was surprised by the emptiness there, the emptiness that still failed to hide her pain. The emptiness didn't last long; it was quickly replaced by anger.

"What? What more do you want me to say?" she raged, pulling her head out of his hand, but not breaking eye contact. "This place is wrong; it looks wrong, smells wrong, tastes wrong. I don't know this place, I don't understand it, and I don't like it here. I don't like it here, I don't like where I came from, and what sort of problem is that? I'm not entirely sure how I got here; do you want me to make something up? 

"Or maybe you want to make my life even harder," she continued. "I have had a really crappy time this last year; dying was the least of what's been happening to me lately. So, let's continue the pattern of my life. What are you going to do now? What are you going to say to fuck my life up more then it is at the moment? What the hell are you going to do now, you unadulterated bastard?" Her voice rose until she was screaming, trained lungs forcing sound, echoing around the oasis.

"I'm sorry," said Knives, simply. The words surprised him almost as mush as her, and he was more surprised to find that he meant them. What was wrong with him? Stupid human must have affected him more then he thought when she forced her memories on him.

Shock replaced rage. Her face paled from an angry red to a shade only slightly darker then white. She hadn't imagined that reply was even possible. "What?" she whispered.

"I'm sorry," he repeated irritated at having to repeat himself. Irritation was good, safe. He could handle being irritated. "I was wrong to force my memories on you."

"What?" she accused. "Afraid of breaking your new toy? You don't need to pretend anything. Your crap I can handle. Suddenly acquiring lots more memories of pain and abuse I can handle, too. I'm just having a hard time handling it well."

Knives pushed her away. "I don't lie to protect the feelings of vermin, and I'm not apologizing for hurting you in any matter. What I did was reprehensible and wrong. It was much like Steve did, and the only thing I was trying to tell you was that I recognized that what I did was abusive. Verminlike."

"Yippie for you," she said sarcastically. "Does it make you feel all better, to have said you were wrong to the little human? Why bother demeaning yourself, caring about the feelings of such a lower life form? Does acknowledging that you can be just as horrible as your tormenter absolve you from guilt?"

"No," he said quietly. "If I knew that apologizing would only antagonize you, though, I would have refrained."

A sudden thought and more invective flew from her. "No, you don't want to antagonize me. I can handle you when I'm angry. You have a much better chance of controlling me if I listen to you. You want me to think that underneath all the bastard might lie a heart. Go to hell; I'm not buying it."

Knives' hands flew up to the sky and he sighed. "You are the most aggravating person alive," he growled, getting up and pacing away.

"No, you are!" she screamed at his retreating back. 

She sat there and glared at his back until she finally felt foolish. He was merely ignoring her. The only thing she could do to feel more foolish would be sticking her tongue out at his back. So she did, then turned and stared at the sky.

Dammit. She needed to get a grip, get a hold of herself. She tried telling herself that she had been through worse, which was true. She tried telling herself that she could get through this, which was also true. She had seen hell, all sorts of hell, and she had survived. What was making this so hard? 

Sighing, she finally allowed that you can only run from a problem for so long before you needed to confront it. She relaxed that part of her mind that had been trying to protect her, trying to keep her from accepting her fate. Slowly, the idea formed in her mind, words creeping into formation, description fading into focus.

For the first time in her life, she had no hope. 

*************************************************************************

Knives was having trouble grappling with all the new memories in his head. He had been entirely unprepared for the assault, hadn't known just how damaging it was to have someone else's memories downloaded into your mind. It wasn't an experience you could distance yourself from; there was no way to pretend that you weren't affected. It wasn't as if you merely watched the memories, playing a passive role in regards to the past.

You lived them, each memory imprinting itself firmly on your mind. Whatever was placed in your head became a part of your life, undifferentiated from the days you had actually lived. The horror of the memories was still fresh in his mind, but as they cycled through his head he could not tell which episodes of abuse were his and which were hers without actively thinking about it.

That bothered him, that what she put in his head could be so similar to what was already there. Wasn't his pain unique? Shouldn't he be able to tell which memories were his merely by the signature of anguish? Why was he remembering things that had happened to her as the worst things that had happened to him? 

It irked him that he had to know so much about a human, and even worse was that he had given her so much of himself. He hadn't realized that he was giving her such a window into his soul. He now knew her entire childhood, and she knew his. Against his will, there was now a bond between them, a strong bond of shared memories. He hadn't even imagined that this could happen, that his link could do this to him, could actually make him feel something other then hate for a human. 

This was all her fault. She should have warned him that this could happen. If she were any sort of teacher. . . At that word, he flinched. 

Knives' nostrils flared, but otherwise he gave no sign of the anger that erupted within. Not like that female was watching anyway, but some habits were hard to break. She had infected him with her problem! How dare she? Horrible enough that he had to know what she lived through without developing the same mental problems.

But, if he now had the problem, he also must know what caused it. Curious, he reviewed her memories, searching for the clue to this malady. It wasn't an easy task. She could point to the memories that bothered her the most, but he had no such emotional clues to navigate by. Instead, he had to sit there and ponder whatever memories his mind brought up.

In the first one, s/he was sitting primly in a study, well-groomed and careful not to fidget. Her stepfather was entertaining, and the guest was an important person, someone it was essential that s/he not screw up in front of. S/he tried very hard to be perfect, but still managed to mess up.

"Thank you, daddy," s/he had said, sweetly, when offered a sweetmeat. 

"That's Teacher-daddy," he had corrected with a smile, but his eyes had hinted at the pain that slip was to cause her.

Another memory, this one while s/he was at school. This school was odd, ranks of children being forced to learn more then he thought human children could. In a time where there was plenty of access to memory aids, the children were being trained to carry all knowledge in their heads, like the ancient scholars. They carried no books, no writing aids of any sort, but were expected to attend lectures and memorize every spoken word. Amazingly, to him at least, the concept worked. The minds that this school produced were some of the most finely trained in the history of the world.

But some of the means to instill this method of learning also left bruises and cuts on the students. Corporeal punishment was an accepted and encouraged method of motivation, and the female's stepfather had tacitly informed his colleagues that s/he needed more correction then most. Despite her near-perfect recall, s/he still managed to be beaten more often then any of her classmates.

Every teacher she met seemed to have the same goal: to break her spirit. S/he defied them all, body bloodied but head unbowed. Hatred flowed from her, and when the teachers saw this, they tried even harder to beat the defiance out of her. They failed, but through no fault of their own. They just couldn't overcome the innate stubbornness of the girl. The more they tried, the more s/he hated them, until even the concept of a teacher filled her with rage, a rage mostly directed at her father, but with enough flexibility to hate anyone who presumed to teach her.

Other memories surfaced in a similar vein, both of her stepfather's insistence that he be called by his proper title at all times and of torment at the hands of her teachers. These only served to reinforce the impression that he got from the first two. One, that teacher was not just a descriptive noun for a occupation, but a title with some prestige attached. Two, that she had suffered at the hands of those who proudly named themselves teachers, and their emphasis on the name caused her to attach some negative emotional significance to the term.

Knives smiled when he figured it out, then frowned. Now he knew how to manipulate her, but the means that he would need to use were as reprehensible to him as they were to her. Trying to control her through her rage would be a chancy business if he were trying to manipulate her while he was upset as well. You needed to be calm to manipulate effectively. 

He found that he was drumming his fingers on his knee and forced his hand to still. The thought of manipulating her was bothering him now. Maybe it was because he was closer to her now then any other living creature, although even the idea made him shudder. Causing her pain through these memories would cause him pain as well. Presumably, the same went for her as well, but that would cause her little difficulty. She had other means of manipulating him then pain.

Knives didn't smile at the idea, but he was unable to keep the glint form his eye. It was time he stopped thinking of pain as the only way to manipulate these vermin. There were many methods he could use, and it was as she said herself, she could handle him when she was upset; it was when he tried to be nice that she grew flustered. 

Being nice to a vermin might be distasteful, but if it worked. . . 

*************************************************************************

Kiley stared morosely around the oasis and resisted the urge to bury her head in her knees. Tempting as it was, she didn't need the luxury of pretending that the situation she was in didn't exist. Some weak people who weren't her might be convinced to imagine that life could be wished into some semblance of what they desired, but she wasn't going to lie to herself. Again. For someone who prided herself on total honesty, she had managed to lie to herself rather well.

It had been her one and only hope. After she had managed to screw up her life beyond hope of redemption back home, she had dusted off an old dream and hung her heart on it. Maybe it was just the old "hope of heaven" routine that kept so many other people going, the same impetus that made martyrs, but she had truly believed that after she died that some being was actually going to make her dreams come true.

And why not? She was a firm believer in infinity. In an infinite universe, paralleled by infinite other universes, there was an infinite variety of possibilities. Why couldn't she be pulled from one universe to another? It was a possibility, and no matter how remote the chance was, she had believed with all her heart that after she died, she would be taken to a land where she could finally know peace.

When she had closed her eyes for the final time in her home dimension, she had cast her soul upon the whims of fate. When she opened them and saw that which she had always hoped for, her heart rejoiced. The happiest moment of her life came after she died, and how pathetic is that? Maybe the concept of Dream Dancer was juvenile, but in her defense, she had developed it when she was six. Six-year olds are allowed a touch of whimsy in their lives, a belief in magic before life grinds away the soft parts of your soul.

Dream Dancer had been the personification of her hopes. The love and warmth that had suffused her soul as she was in her presence had been a balm to a wounded heart. She had needed to believe that she was being given a reprieve, that she was actually going to a place where she could allow herself to stop fighting, to maybe even find someone that could love even a monster like her.

Then she ended up here. With him. She suppressed the urge to shoot an angry glance across the oasis; it wasn't his fault she was upset. He was just being Knives, the psychotic asshole he'd always been. It wasn't his fault that she had been put here, in this world, in his company. That he was a convenient target didn't give her the excuse to get mad at him for just being himself. Easy to say, harder to remember, and maybe impossible to act on, but she would have to try.

It was just so hard to have your one and only dream turn to ashes. Her heart ached with the weight of unshed tears. It sat in her chest like lead, a weight dragging her down farther and farther into depression. Why was life always so hard? Why did bad stuff keep happening to her? Why did she have to be here? Maybe it would be better to just die, again, and hope that she reached an end this time.

She looked around the oasis, carefully avoiding looking near Knives. The land was so stark. This place was a haven compared to most of the planet, and what did she see? Rocks and a few scraggly plants huddling near a puddle of water. Her eyes drifted towards the sky, and her body followed by falling back onto the sand. The sting of impact broke her depression a bit. The suns glittered in the too-blue sky, a sky that needed a cloud or two to break the monotony of unadulterated color. 

How many days had she longed to see that color? Her mind cast back over the memories of her childhood, of living in a place that was lucky to see blue sky one day in three, and almost never in the winter. There had been times that her soul ached to see just a glimpse of sunlight, a break in the cloud cover, and now that the sky above her was filled with light she wanted clouds. Idly she wondered if someday she would be content with what she had.

Someday. Every time she wanted something, she always prefaced the desire with someday. Maybe she should stop waiting for someday. Waiting was obviously getting her nowhere, except more and more depressed. Maybe she should start trying to enjoy life now, enjoy every minute as she lived it and telling someday off. Maybe it was time to stop hoping for anything and making the best of what she had. Maybe. . . 

"Gah!" she cried out as Knives' head suddenly appeared, blocking the light. She quickly scrambled out from underneath him.

"You could warn somebody that you're stalking them," she said waspishly.

Knives blinked. "Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?" he asked facetiously. 

Kiley appeared to give the question some thought as she brushed the sand off her back. "I suppose it would," she said thoughtfully, "but you should do it anyway. I'm not going to be able to teach you much if I'm dead of a heart attack."

"I'll keep that in mind for when I'm done with you, though," he said. "Startling as a tool for murder."

"Mmm. I can see it now, me falling dead of fright. Actually, somehow, not," she joked. 

"Anyway, what do you want now?" she asked.

"Maybe, just to talk," he said, hesitantly. 

Kiley was shocked, then suspicious. Her suspicions she kept off her face as she patted the sand to her right. "Plenty of ground to go around," she invited.

"So, what do you want to talk about," Kiley asked. "The weather? The latest sports scores? Fashion disasters and gossiping about the rich and famous? Easiest way to kill someone at fifty paces? It's not like we have a lot in common, and frankly, the places our interests collide aren't subjects I care to dwell on." Her voice was even and bored. She was tired of pretending to make small talk. No one cared about her opinions; they just wanted something from her. While it was nice in a sick way to be an object of desire, it would be nicer if she could stop being just an object for a while.

Knives looked a bit taken aback, but he sat down next to her anyway, smoothing the sand before he sat down. Kiley suppressed the urge to ask if that made it any more comfortable. Brushing the few grains of sand away was not going to suddenly make solid ground appear, as this planet had more land area covered with sand then the earth had water, but far be it for her to remark on other people's peculiarities.

"I was thinking that maybe we could get to know each other better," he started. "If we're going to be spending time together, we should see if. . ."

Kiley cut him off. "Hmm. Telling you all about me, so you can better develop a means to kill me when you're done with me. Pardon me if I feel like passing." Sarcasm dripped from her words, her cynicism showing in inflections and changes of tone.

He shot her an exasperated glance. The big blue eyes were particularly expressive, showing equal parts disgust and amusement. "Are you always this confrontational?" he asked. Trust a human to be as obnoxious as possible in the fewest amount of words.

"That depends. Are you always this transparent?" she shot back.

Silence hung in the air while Knives tried to come up with an answer. "Do you find it so difficult to believe that I could be asking just because I'm curious about you as a person?" he said finally.

"In a word: yes," she said quickly. "Knives, call me silly, but I just get this feeling that you don't see humans as people. Saying that you're interested in me as a person is about as believable as saying you are interested in that rock over there as a person. Only, when all is said and done, I'm pretty sure you would prefer the rock."

Silence descended again. Kiley stared between the rocks at the desert beyond and tried to ignore the situation. She could feel Knives staring at her, but tried to pay no attention. Let him stare; he wasn't going to get much out of it.

Knives was at a loss. Here he was, trying to be nice to the vermin, and she was having none of it You would think that she would be glad of his attention, realizing that any time that such a superior being wasted on her was a precious gift, but she spurned it. He sighed, wondering just how he was supposed to get her to open up. Time stretched out between them as he grappled with the age-old problem of a man trying to talk to a prickly woman. He might have been a super-intelligent being, but he was still stumped by that one.

"You know," she said idly, "it's a wonder that a man approaching his sesquicentennial still hasn't learned patience."

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, carefully controlling his tone to make sure he was asking and not demanding. She didn't seem to like demanding, and no matter how much he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake all the intriguing things out of her simple little mind he accepted that tactic wasn't going to work. Why he was being forced to be nice to an obnoxious human female was beyond him, and as he waited for her answer he dwelled on the circumstances that brought him to this point. Try as he might, he couldn't see anyway to have stopped this, at least, not after she escaped the ship. But getting upset with himself over that slip wouldn't help matters now. It was no use dwelling on the past, even when the past was much more enticing then what he was going through now.

"I dunno," she finally said. "It just seems that you wouldn't be rushing into trying to be nice to me and being completely obvious if you had just a little more patience. And you would think that a guy your age would have learned that patience is a virtue."

"How long should I have waited?" he asked, matching her light tone, his eyes sparkling. 

"Well, now, that's a loaded question," she replied. "If I say a day, now, and you try this again tomorrow, I'll know you listen to me and that you're still trying to manipulate me. If I say a week, I'll get a week of grumpy Knives, and then the same thing. Actually, now you're just screwed. Now no matter when you try this again, I'm going to know that you're full of shit." She paused, then added thoughtfully, "Actually, I didn't need you to try this to know that you're full of shit. But it provides a nice object lesson."

"Hmm. Guess I miscalculated your intelligence." 

"Nope. You underestimated my suspicious nature."

"Hmm." 

Silence fell again, and Kiley once again settled prone on the sand. Knives amused himself with the memory of that brief time that she had been at his mercy. 

"So what did you want to know?" she asked after a few minutes.

"I thought you were suspicious," he said, surprised. 

"Yeah, well, I'm also bored. I'll tell a story, then you tell one, deal?" she said.

Knives blinked, then agreed. Just when he thought the woman might make sense, she went and did something like that. Female humans are such odd creatures.

"So, what do you want to know?" she repeated. "I only have all day."

"You said that you died before coming here."

"Yeah, I did say that, didn't I?" She didn't say anything for a moment, trying to find a way to put into words the circumstances that led the end of her life. She scratched by her eye, then laced her fingers behind her head. The blue sky above stared down at her, the brightness of the day a pleasant contrast to her memories.

"Do you want to know how I died?" she asked. Knives made an annoyed noise of assent.

"I guess you can call my death a vengeful suicide. I had been captured by some enemies, and they had been torturing me for almost six months, trying to break me. Then they were going to kill me. I'm strong, but I found that I had limits. Rather then let them have the pleasure of smashing my psyche into bits, I took the only escape I had."

Knives waited for more. It wasn't forthcoming. 

He rolled over and shook her lightly. "That is not telling a story," he said, looking into her eyes intently. "That is a précis, perhaps, but it is not a story. Stories need more words, a plot, some description, and a point. Tell a story," he said before releasing her.

She cocked her head and looked at him before nodding.

A moment later, she started over. 

"I was captured near the end of a mission. I used to be the leader of a search and rescue team. We were the people who got dispatched to rescue soldiers lost on the field of combat. Anyone in the SAR group were considered to be an extra-special target by our enemies, and as their leader they wanted me beyond easy description. It was demoralizing to our troops to have their rescuers killed or captured in front of their eyes, and due to international law, the SAR troops were not allowed to carry lethal weapons. If any SAR member killed an enemy, even if they were under attack, there would be a murder trial carried out under the High Tribunal. Most of those ended with the SAR member meeting a firing squad.

"So, we were easy targets. Easy to kill, and easy to affect our troops by destroying their hope of rescue. Technically, if the enemy killed a SAR member, it was murder. That rarely stopped them, but it did lead to the second indignity. If they could, they captured someone and broke them. Then they would send them back home. Some people would come back almost the same as before their capture, some would require years of therapy before becoming human again, and some people swore that they were released without having been broken. Then, if anyone questioned their tactics, they would look about innocently, and say 'Well, we didn't kill them,' and wonder what our problem was.

"After being taken by the enemy, your life as a soldier is over, killed, broken, or released. Even those who seemed normal could be harboring plans to sabotage the Union. Some of those who claimed to have been unbroken actually were, and under periods of stress might break under pressure or be compelled to act on impulses ingrained under torture. You couldn't go back to being a soldier, and in many cases your citizenship was severely restricted. Because you couldn't be trusted, you couldn't be relied upon, and a nation at war needs to be able to rely on all it's members.

"Some people didn't mind being returned to the civilian life, but I was definitely in the army for life. It turns out I had a flair for rescuing trapped soldiers. Even better, I found ways to stop the slow bleed of my men from the unit. When I joined the SAR team, the average life expectancy of a member was seven months and two days. When I was captured, I had managed to work that number up to over six years. 

"To put that in context, a soldier was rotated in and out of a unit every five years. That means that to begin with, joining the SAR was a virtual death sentence. Seventeen people had managed to serve their entire term and get rotated out over the twenty-nine years of the unit. It was a place that troublemakers got banished to, embarrassments were exiled, and the inept were safely shelved away. When I was done, there were people actually volunteering for the unit, for the prestige. That's an achievement, but doing a good job only gets you noticed. In war, garnering attention is not exactly a good thing.

"Anyway, all of that, plus some incidental personal stuff, made me a prime target. The enemy began to try to capture me, purposefully taking our soldiers hostage to entice my unit into the field, me at the head. I honestly couldn't count the number of times that they tried to trap me, always at the expense of the lives of our ground troops. 

"It made me pissy, but that's not really a part of the story.

"Finally, one of their traps, coupled with a few acts of sabotage within the unit, succeeded in capturing me. I was taken and tortured for months, pain unending. I really can't describe it as a fun point in my life, but I managed for the most part. It angered them that they couldn't break me, and the tortures grew worse and worse. 

"What they didn't realize was that taking me from the field of battle had pretty much ended my life. If they had released me and forced me to live as a civilian it would have hurt me more then everything else they tried, but they were too focused on physical and emotional pain to figure that one out. 

"They hurt me, many ways, many times, torture and disfigurement. They showed me video footage of my stepfather in tears, a full Professor at that point, telling the world that even though I was his daughter, there could be no rescue attempt, and then they detailed how he had colluded with them to assist in my capture. They thought the betrayal might break me, but they didn't realize that I had expected such behavior from him and the people he represented. I had become a politically embarrassing tangled mess, and the easier way to deal with me was to get rid of me. I understood this, and had been waiting for it. It's hard to get overly disappointed when people act the way you expect them to.

"No matter what they did, I didn't break. It made them pissy."

"I knew that it was the last battle of my life, and I do pride myself on the fact that I never lose."

"You did die," interjected Knives.

Kiley shot him a dirty look. "There's dying, and then there's losing. Did Legato lose?"

"Well, since he failed to make Vash change, I would have to say yes," Knives said shortly.

She shrugged. "Well, the intent was there, and it was a very good try. Sometimes death is just another move in the chess game. Anyway, after about a month I knew that no one was going to rescue me, and my enemies did a really neat job of keeping me contained. I truly admire the way they kept me from being able to escape. Even after months in their possession, they didn't relax their guard one iota. Even after I was crippled and unable to move on my own, they didn't change their routine. 

"It's nice to be acknowledged as dangerous. It would have been nicer to have been able to escape, but I didn't miss out on much by dying. My life would have changed when I was forced out of the army, and other then fighting I don't have much in the way of job skills. I mean, not many people want to hire a notorious assassin. You can't really work retail; customers looking at the cashier and then running into the street screaming can really put a dent in business. 

"Nope, my life had already ended. I had done my bad deeds, and I had done my good deeds, and there wasn't much left for me to do. If they broke me, I'd have suicided within a month. If they hadn't, I might have succeeded in slipping into obscurity after a few years, but I'd been spending too many years accomplishing important things to accept retirement. I'm addicted to excitement, to the thought of affecting the way the world turns. I'm used to being powerful, I guess, to having powerful people come to me and need my help. Taking that from me would have been like stealing a piece of my soul, and a soul like mine doesn't have any it can lose.

"I had accepted death. I hoped that after death would come a period of peace, and a feeling of belonging that I never seemed to find on my own world, and that hope gave me the courage to ignore what my enemies did to me. 

"It's a common fact that faith in an afterlife can help someone handle pain. The martyrs and Christian saints had their faith in heaven, their belief that due to persisting in a "right" course of action they would be admitted to paradise. Same with Muslim jihadists. Any time you can believe in a happy afterlife, you have folks who use that belief to help them accept pain and torture. I never expected that I would get into heaven. Personally, I don't think God would take me. But, I did have my hope for a second chance, and I've always been stubborn. So I held out, staying alive as long as I could, annoying the crap out of those who wanted to break me. 

"Listen up, I'll tell you something you need to know if you ever want to manipulate me," she said conspiratorially. 

Knives looked in her direction again. As she was speaking he found himself looking out over the desert, trying to comprehend what she was saying. Not all of it made sense to him, and there were some things he wanted clarification on, but for the most part he understood what she was saying.

"I am stubborn," she said, drawing each word out like they held more wisdom that way.

At Knives' laugh she continued. "No, you don't get it. I am stubborn. I am probably one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet. I was suicidal; I didn't care to live after they were done torturing me. The only reason I lasted through six months of torture is because I enjoyed pissing my enemies off. That's not quite a sane way of living, but I'm not an entirely sane person. 

"Anyway, I continued to be stubborn until I reached a point where they just got tired of me still being alive. When I knew they were coming to kill me, I finally suicided, making sure to leave my dead body in a pose that conveyed my feelings. I would have loved to see the expressions on their faces when they found me. . .but that wasn't quite possible."

She fell silent, wondering if she was leaving something out.

"How did you kill yourself?" asked Knives. "I would assume that they would have taken measures to prevent you from doing such a thing. If you died too early they would be deprived of pleasure from your pain." Trust Knives to look at it from that angle.

"True, true. No, they did a very good job of keeping me from anything that had sharp edges on it and normal objects of danger. And they kept me from blunt objects and anything that I might possibly use to kill myself, or anyone else. And they kept me drugged to the point that I was barely coherent, let alone able to do any sort of tricks."

"So, how did you manage it? Did you will yourself to death?" he prodded.

She snorted. "What sort of horrible books do you read? You can't will yourself to death! Or, at least, I can't. No, it was much more prosaic.

"They kept me in a room with nothing but a door and a tiny ventilation grate in the ceiling. The air grate and the system were clean when they threw me in the cell, but after four months it began to grow mold. I didn't have much that I could do in the way of tricks, but I was capable of making spores grow. In my lungs. I didn't live long without oxygen."

Knives nodded. "That would work," he said.

"It did work. I felt like I had just fallen asleep for a fraction of an instant, and then I awoke near Dream Dancer, healed and healthy in body. You pretty much know what happened after that," she finished.

"That's an interesting way to die," mused Knives.

Kiley shrugged. "I didn't have too many options to work with, and it did the job. Manipulating growth requires a very delicate touch, and I don't think they thought I was quite that practiced with tricks. It's a common misconception that a solider spends so much time learning big flashy tricks that they never learn to be subtle." 

Her mouth quirked in a half-grin. "That's if they thought of the mold at all. I doubt they did; it's not like they were expecting me to live as long as I did. Likely, someone just forgot that the ducts needed cleaning. Whatever the reason, I took advantage of their lapse in judgment. I died, and deprived them of the sincere pleasure in killing me."

"Why were these people your enemies?" asked Knives after she had lapsed into silence for a minute.

"That's a whole other story. It's your turn for the next one, so you're just going to have to wait," she chided.

"Hmm." Knives looked around. The suns were beginning to touch the horizon but they were both facing the east. Their shadows stretched out before them, impossibly thin as they reached out into the desert. 

"It's getting late," he said, starting to get up. He was stopped by a hand that had grabbed a good portion of the back of his shirt.

"What, the sun sets and you need to go to bed? Come on, it's your turn to tell a story," she demanded while she tugged him back down.

"It's getting dark," he said, allowing himself to be tugged to the sand, but not resettling.

Kiley twisted her free hand about and created a ball of light. She waved five times, and lights of all different colors appeared before her. A careful tap with a fingernail floated them around where the two of them sat.

"How did you do that?" he asked, finally relaxing on the sand.

"It's the same principle behind a neon light," she said, grabbing his hand down as he reached to tough one. "Careful; they're cold. I take heat energy from the surrounding air and excite the atoms until they give off light. Simple, easy, light. I'll teach you tomorrow." 

"Now, tell me a story," she demanded. Knives shook himself out of his reverie and looked from the lights to her, disgust heavily painted on his features.

"What do you want to know?" he sighed.

"Hmm. Let me think," she said, settling back down on the sand. Idly she played with the lights, juggling them about with her mind as she pondered her list of questions. Knives watched, then stole one from her grasp to play with. She opened her eyes to look, and saw he has taken control of the one the same shade of blue as the color of his eyes. 

That, she thought, is the most strangely vain man I've ever met. He doesn't believe he's gorgeous, but surrounds himself with beautiful things. She forced her mind back to thinking about what question she wanted answered most.

"Why did you kill that guy who was related to Rem? You must have known that it would only hurt your brother, and I thought you loved him," she asked.

Knives played with the ball of light, silent for a minute. Kiley didn't push, but waited to see if he would tell the story in his own time.

"That man actually wasn't related to Rem Saverem at all," he said, finally. 

"Mmm?" she said, more an encouraging noise then a comment.

"As far as traps go, it was quite simple. Vash never expects a trap; duplicity isn't a part of his nature. I entered a false genealogy into the Seeds ship database, and Vash came along, just as I thought he would. It was just a matter of timing, of making sure I was in that man's office when he came running in.

"Actually, it had been interesting watching that trash die. I shot him in the chest, but he didn't die quickly. I had amused myself by listening to the little sucking noises as he tried to breathe. He ended up drowning in his own blood, but it was a quick race between that and bleeding out. I am always amazed by the quantity of blood that flows through the human body.

"Anyway, he had just finished dying when Vash came in. I had picked that man because I needed to get Vash to the center of July. Since July was the largest city on the planet, it was the perfect place to truly begin the eradication of the vermin. Unfortunately," and he sighed, "Vash has never agreed that humans all need to die. He shot me, and that was then end of that. I never imagined that the sentimental fool could be stronger then me; I still don't know how he manages it."

Kiley waited as he fell silent.

"That wasn't much more of a story then what you gave me grief for," she pointed out.

"It is all you are going to get," he replied, still intent on the ball of light.

"Why did you want to hurt Vash?" she persisted.

Knives didn't respond, but walked off into the quickening night with her light. She stared after him, and wondered. Thoughts moved through her head in a swirl, touching her consciousness only lightly, no words, only concepts and ideas in their most primal form. 

She could never imagine hurting someone she loved. She had died to keep from hurting the only person she loved in her world. Pain is too cheap to spend it on those you cherish; happiness the only coin that is worth the price of their heart. Her life caused him pain, so she gave it up. She hoped he was happy, now, and wished him well. That was love, her sort of love at least, twisted and frail as it may be.

How does love spoil into hate? She wished she knew, but also was glad to be innocent of the knowledge. 


	9. A silent battle

Ooh, look at this: I formally make no claims on the Trigun franchise.

Well, I haven't moved yet, so you guys get another chapter. Let my loss be your gain. Enjoy!

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She continued to watch him as he settled down to sleep. If he noticed her staring at him he gave no sign. She wondered idly what that meant. Surely he noticed that she was looking in his direction. Did it not bother him? Of course it must; she was just a vermin, her very gaze must be dirty. Did he want her to think that it didn't bother him? Did he thing that she was that stupid? Did he know that she wasn't stupid enough to believe that he would not be bothered by her looking at him? Did he know that she knew that. . . oh, never mind. There was only so far she was willing to take that train of thought.

Besides, this was not the time to be worrying over things like Knives' supposed reaction to her idle glances. The shakes from the forced link were beginning to set in. Sitting as she did with her hands laced around her knees it was hard to tell how queasy and wobbly she was, but she knew they had started. The best thing for her right now would be food, would be some energy, but her stomach rebelled at the thought of anything entering. 

Watching Knives, she wondered if her was feeling them. Could plants get the shakes? This teaching thing was hard enough for her, and the fact that he was an alien being didn't make things any less complicated. Maybe she was the one from another universe, or galaxy, or wherever, but at least she was mostly human. She didn't know what plants were capable of, beyond the generic idea of "much more then her." Not knowing, not even having the slightest clue of the capabilities of her student was tying her stomach in knots. 

She thought she was doing a good job of keeping her uneasiness from showing, but then again, with Knives, who could tell? She worried that one of these days she was going to show him something and, because he was different, that there would be problems. With her luck, she would try to teach him light-shaping, and he would blow up the oasis. Or the region. Or the planet. Or he would spontaneously combust.

No, this teaching idea was a bad one, no matter how you looked at it. If she could find some way to stop, she would. Could she train him without killing him? Did she want to? An untrained Knives had managed to blow up two cities by proxy, and had personally been responsible for the deaths of innumerable humans. If he could take the knowledge she could teach him and apply it to the eradication of the human race she wasn't sure she had a chance of stopping him. That she could keep herself alive, and a few others, she had no doubt. But enough to keep the race viable? That was a tricky question. 

Evolution theorists said that the entire human race came from a small group of ten thousand individuals in Africa. Saving that many people would be enough to save the race, but it would be very difficult, and the trouble with having to protect that many lay in the fact that she would only have to fail once. Killing Knives would be a tricky proposition, and he wasn't the sort of person who lacked the will to see a project to the end. No, he would keep attacking until he finally smashed through her defenses, and that would be the end.

Plus, she wasn't immortal. Another twenty years and she wouldn't be any sort of match for him. He'd likely be just the same as he was now, young and powerful while she was aging and dying. Could she find someone to take her place? Were there humans like her on this planet, somewhere? Or had the genetic engineers of this universe, or galaxy, or whatever bent their talents towards the creation of the plants and ignored the latent talents of humanity?

Too many questions, too many problems. The right time to ponder them was not while suffering through the shakes. Groaning, she shook her head and started to stand. She placed her hands in the sand beside her and began to push herself up. Before she stood, she realized that she had been thinking of teaching, and students, and hadn't flinched from the word once. She hadn't even noticed that she had been thinking it. She shot a startled glance at Knives, surprised that what he did to her had actually had a beneficial side effect.

Knives had settled down and fallen asleep while she had mused on the impossibility of stopping him. The soft blue light bobbed slowly by his head, swayed by his breath. Even from where she sat, she could see his face contorted in pain.

"Looks like plants get the shakes, too," she whispered guiltily as she got to her feet. She padded over to him on cat feet, careful not to wake him as she drew near. The agony in his face wrenched something inside her, some last bastion of pity, and she found herself falling to her knees and smoothing the hair from his troubled brow. She knew he was a horrible man, she knew that he probably deserved to sleep with pain for a night, but there was something in his face that made her feel maternal.

Maybe it was the lost-little boy look of his scrunched up face, or maybe it was the lines of pain on his otherwise smooth brow, but somehow she found herself laying the back of her hand on his forehead, a feather-light touch before starting a link. She drew out the pain and mixed it with the agony inside her. You couldn't make pain disappear, but you could spread it around, and she was used to pain. It didn't bother her that much.

"No use both of us losing sleep over this," she breathed, her lips shaping the words with only the barest hint of sound. Then, on impulse, she leaned over and placed a soft kiss on the now untroubled cheek. The smell of his hair was tantalizing, soft and sweet, like feathers. She inhaled deeply, then rose with one smooth motion and left to go climb a spire. If she could work herself into exhaustion, she might manage a few hours of decent sleep tonight.

Knives opened his eyes a fraction and watched her go. He would never understand humans.

As she climbed a spire, the lights danced and bobbed around her, creating shadows and obscuring handholds. Nothing like a challenge to keep her mind off the fact that her hands were shaking almost bad enough to make her lose her grip. Concentration, that was key. If she could just keep her mind focused on climbing she could ignore the pain that was eating her up inside. She was beginning to regret her impulse to take Knives' pain as well. Not that she regretted taking it from him, but it was beginning to hurt a lot, and she wasn't sure how easy this night was going to be on her.

She toyed with the idea of letting him know what she was going through for him, but discarded it with a wry little smile. He wasn't going to care that she did something nice for him; he probably would expect it. Besides, how nice would she be if she badgered him into acknowledging her sacrifice? It was better to do a good deed that goes unnoticed then to annoy the crazy man who hadn't asked for her help in the first place.

Whose stupid idea was it to go rock climbing in the dark anyway? She would have wondered at her sanity if she hadn't already come to terms with the fact that she was insane. She needed to get to the top of the rock, and quickly. Every second was growing more and more precious. The shakes were beginning to overwhelm her concentration, and it was a long way to the desert floor. 

She was almost to the top when her hand cramped. This wasn't a good sign. Another fifteen feet and she would have made it without incident. Instead, she had to fight through the pain that radiated from her palm. As she slowly straightened her fingers her other hand began to twinge. The danger of her position gave her a boost of energy, and she was able to ignore the pain long enough to pull herself to the top. Adrenaline junkie, danger seeker, trouble's friend, she was used to the chemical energy boost.

As soon as she was able, she collapsed in a small pile. The exertions of the climb echoed in her arms and shoulders, but that pain was nothing in comparison to the shakes. The muscles in her chest and abdomen began to spasm, jerking her against the cold stone, and shaking her close to the edge. 

Grimly, she inched away from the fall, pulling herself along with fingertips devoid of strength. Some small portion of her mind noted that the shakes had never been this bad before, but most of her concentration was filled with the immediate problem of not dying. It took her ten minutes to crawl fifteen feet from the edge, and in that time the severity of the shakes did not abate. Finally deeming herself far enough away from the dangerous precipice, she curled up in a ball and concentrated on breathing. Her diaphragm was the only muscle in her chest that she had any control over, but the spasms of the surrounding muscles made it incredibly difficult to take anything beyond a shallow breath.

Tears of pain poured down her face, mixing with grit and getting in her mouth. The taste of snot and dirt and salt coated her tongue, and she'd have tried to swallow the taste away if she could. Time held no meaning as she endured the pain and the suffocation as her body betrayed her, turning against her. 

The body was not meant to hold memories not its own, and tried to force them from it. Scientists and metaphysicists had both tried to find an answer to this problem, but both were stumped. The forced transfer of memories did not seem to affect the body in a physical matter during transfer, but when the mind was not properly attuned to the transfer the body would respond with the shakes. 

Unfortunately, and despite all physical evidence to the contrary, the shakes were not psychosomatic. They affected everyone, even those who had no idea that they were possible. Even so, logic dictated that they were only a figment of the imagination. Kiley spent the time huddled in a ball chanting to herself, trying to convince her body that there was no reason to be going through this hell. It seemed to help.

After an eternity of pain, she began to feel nauseated, and instead of depressing her more, she felt her spirits rise. It was a sign that the attack was coming to a close. In another fifteen minutes or so she would be able to breathe normally again. Everything would slowly calm back to normal, and she might have a whole half an hour until the next attack. She figured she would probably go through five of six of these tonight, unless she could exhaust herself into a state of unconsciousness. 

Driving herself into a coma was dangerous, but she had found it to be the easiest way of dealing with the shakes. With any luck, she would managed to collapse before the next episode. 

As soon as she could, she pushed herself to her feet. Concentrating only on the movements her body was making, she stepped forward, each step sure and confident, defying the tremors that ran through her taxed and tired muscles. She pushed herself as far as she could, as fast as she could, and while she wasn't able to do anything strenuous, dogged determination kept her on her feet as she tried to wear herself out. The more tired she got, the harder she pressed on, until the last reserves of energy were depleted.

Her last conscious thought was one of triumph as she fell to the rock, spent of every last drop of vitality. When she hit she gashed open her temple, and the blood mixed with the tears she had forgotten to wipe away. The lights around her winked out, dissipating into the night and she slept.

The two suns were well above the horizon when Kiley finally struggled out of sleep. She found herself splayed on her back, limbs akimbo and broiling under the suns. Her entire body ached with a bone deep weariness that throbbed in time with her pulse. She tried to swallow, but there was not enough moisture in her mouth to complete the task. The pounding in her head heralded the worst headache of her life.

All in all, it felt like the worst hangover she had ever had, doubled. It took her a minute to collect her thoughts enough to roll over. When she was on her stomach, she pressed her forehead to the cool stone and wondered if she had enough energy to climb down from this lofty perch. After a slow check of the way she felt, the answer was no. 

She cursed herself for climbing up there in the first place. While it seemed like a good idea at the time, and while she didn't realize that the shakes were going to be as horrible as they had been, she should have realized it was a bad idea. Medical emergencies and nighttime rock climbing don't go together, and taking herself out of reach of the only water source was nearly suicidal. You would think, after years of stupid stunts like this one, she would begin to learn, but no. Give her a month and she would most likely do something to top even this stunt.

She allowed herself the small luxury of a groan before crawling to the edge of the spire. Yup. Down there was water. She could see the sun glinting off the surface, and wondered if she had enough energy to get some without passing out. Hmm, uhh, probably. Worth a shot, at least.

She reached out with her mind and gently pulled a sphere of water out of the spring. Concentrating through the pounding in her head she floated it up towards her. For a moment her control slipped, but only a few drops spilled to the ground before she caught it again. Drinking it did much for the pounding in her head, but it awoke a raging hunger. Her stomach reminded her that she had skipped dinner the night before and seemed to have missed breakfast. It also let her know that these were very bad things that she needed to take care of right now.

Despite the prodding of hunger, she stayed where she was for a moment, enjoying the partial relief. The ground was still very far away, and she was still very tired. She toyed with the notion of floating some food up there as well, then decided that it was probably a better idea then trying to climb down to get it. She looked for her pack, then slowly concentrated on undoing the ties. Luckily, her food was on top of everything, and she grabbed the first thing from the bag and lifted it to her.

Bread. Glorious, wonderful, three-day old bread. She dug into it, ripping chunks off the loaf and shoving them in her mouth, swallowing as fast as she could. After eating she felt a little better, but still didn't want to move. Instead she lay there, her head hanging out into space while her body leeched warmth from the suns. She tensed and relaxed her muscles, trying to work the kinks out without actually moving.

Motion below caught her eye. Knives was walking over to the base of her spire.

"What are you doing up there?" he yelled.

"Escaping from you," she yelled back.

He didn't say anything, but stood there and stared up at her. She contemplated how small he was, and how she could cover his whole body with her thumb. She debated proving that but decided that moving was too much work.

Knives walked up to the very base of the tower and started to climb.

"Don't," Kiley called out.

Knives stopped a few feet from the ground and looked up with a smile. "It doesn't look like you can stop me," he commented.

"I have rocks," she retorted. Sweeping one arm across the ground she scattered pebbles over the edge. Most bounced harmlessly into the air, but a couple hit him. He jumped back from the wall and looked up at her, hands on hips.

"Get down here," he demanded.

"I'm trying," she yelled back. Suiting actions to words, she managed to get to her hands and knees. She backed around and flopped her legs over the edge. Slowly lowering herself, she began the torturous descent. 

She had to stop for a minute when she was halfway down. A sudden wave of nausea forced her to relieve herself of everything she had eaten that morning. Knives danced out of the way of the descending digestive matter, his disgust evident on his face. 

"Did you go up there to get drunk?" he asked.

"Worst hangover of my life," she answered proudly. She tried to sketch a saucy little salute, but lost her grip instead. For a brief moment, it looked like she was going to recover, but slowly she toppled off the side of the spire. 

Frantically, she tried the only trick she could think of to slow her plunge. She made webs of air but broke through them with barely any change in her rate of descent. Smashing through them tingled, a strange sensation that she would have pondered if she wasn't fighting for her life. She had only time to create three of them before reaching the floor. As she fell, she relaxed and closed her eyes, hoping to keep from breaking anything vital when she hit.

Landing was painful, but not as much as she had been expecting. She opened her eyes and looked into Knives'. Those big baby blues were so close, but she couldn't decipher the expression on his face. Relief? Pride? Disgust? 

"My hero," she said softly, one hand moving up to touch his cheek. She stopped herself before connecting, unsure of his reaction.

A strange look crossed his face. He dropped her to the sand and walked away.

Knives stalked back across the oasis, fuming and annoyed with himself. He should have let her fall. Whatever impulse moved him to catch her was nothing more then a temporary bit of insanity, a malaise of emotion. He wiped his palms on his pants, trying to get the feel of her off his skin. His shoulders ached from catching her, not painfully, but annoyingly. He rotated them, trying to ease some of the tension, but found no relief. 

Him, saving a human. A superior breed and he lowered himself, demeaned himself by coming to her rescue. The fall probably wasn't going to kill her. She would have been easier to manipulate if she was broken in a few places. It would have been interesting to see what she would do if she were dependent on him. He entertained a brief fantasy of dragging her up one of these stupid rocks and pushing her off to find out. He discarded it reluctantly, knowing that she was unlikely to accommodate his desire.

Besides, somehow she would manage to twist the situation around to her advantage, he was sure. He had never met a human so used to getting her own way. Most humans accepted that the world would not accede to their demands, and changed to fit circumstances. She didn't make demands. She just decided what she was going to do and made the world fit around her actions. Saying that she demanded something implied that the rest of the world had a choice.

She would make such a wonderful pet, though, if he could tame her. Legato had done well, but he had been a broken toy long before Knives ever met him. Making Legato dance to his tune had been easy; he merely had to show that he was a superior being and he fell all over himself trying to be useful. That woman, on the other hand, refused to admit that she was outclassed. She didn't want to understand that as a plant, he was so much greater then her that she had no chance to be anything near his equal. Instead, she stubbornly ignored his attempts to put her in her place. What made it annoying instead of amusing was the way she didn't acknowledge his actions as anything potentially troubling. No, she saw him more as a child demanding to be treated as an adult.

Damn her! The more time he spent around her, the more annoyed he got. She should be falling all over herself to do his bidding. Instead, she sat in her lotus pose, teaching him things that he had never dreamed existed. He almost found him trying to coerce information out of her with something other then threats. Him! Ask for something from a mere human! The thought was bad enough to make him grit his teeth.

He knew more about her then he had about anyone else, alive or dead, and he still didn't understand her at all. At the end of her childhood she was a broken, angry mess. Now, she seemed almost serene, at peace with herself. She didn't look as if many years could have elapsed from the time of the memories she "shared" with him, but being an other-dimensional being, who could tell how old she was when she died? 

It was difficult for him to accept that she was an alien. It explained many things about her, and how she was able to perform these little tricks of hers, but it didn't explain how she knew so much about him, and about this world. If she was from another dimension, how did she know so much about this planet, and him? Did that Dream Dancer thing tell her? And if it had, why had she been surprised to see him that first day? 

And why him, of all beings? Why was she sent to him? If he felt like being conceited, he would assume that the universe had sent him a teacher to aid him in his quest to destroy the humans. He didn't believe that, but couldn't come up with a better reason. Why him? It can't have been an accident that she showed up where she did, and when she did. Someone must have had a reason, a desire to distract him. She had worked admirably on that score, but did she know? How much did she know about him and this world.

It was enough to drive him to distraction. If only she had been male, this would have been easier. Females were born only to be ornery, and to drive men insane with their lack of logic. What had possessed her to climb up there last night? He knew that she hadn't gone up there to drink, but she hadn't denied his allegation. Was she so afraid to show weakness that she would risk death instead of showing that she was fallible?

That fit with what he knew of her, but how could he use it against her? He wouldn't show weakness in front of an enemy, either. All this told him was that she considered him dangerous, which was something he already knew. It was good that she was respectful of his capacity for violence, but he knew that already. The problem with her was that she respected him, but did not fear him, and he didn't know how to control someone except through fear. 

It was easy enough, if distasteful, to decide to be nice to a vermin. But how was he supposed to erode her defenses when she was so suspicious all the time. She was cautious almost to the verge of paranoia, unwilling to see anything he did as simple. She was too smart to be taken in by pretty words and gestures. No, to make her trust him at all, to give him a means to manipulate her, he would have to actually like her. 

He didn't know if he could come to enjoy the presence of a vermin, let alone this vermin. She was frustrating, aggravating, and seemed to delight in annoying him. 

What he ignored was that she was a lot like him.

*************************************************************************

Kiley watched Knives stalk away, and wondered what she should have said. He was too touchy, that was his problem. You couldn't say anything to him without him taking it the wrong way. She wasn't sure what way she wanted him to take what she had said, but dropping her on her butt definitely wasn't it. 

It was so hard for her to stay suspicious around him. She knew he was a bastard, had seen some of the horrors he was responsible for, but when he looked down at her with those big blue eyes, all she wanted was to believe was that he was as kind as he was beautiful. Acknowledging that beautiful people could be evil had always been one of her weaknesses; Knives was definitely one of the beautiful people.

She would have sat there longer and stewed over what had happened, but nausea revisited her, and thought was discarded in favor of dry heaves. She rolled over and forced herself to her hands and knees, ignoring the soreness in her lower back and rear. When the spasm passed, she looked up and towards the water, judging the distance against what was left of her stamina. It didn't look like she was going to make it.

Nothing worth doing is easy, she consoled herself, as she made herself crawl forward. Coordinating her arms and legs was difficult, thought-intensive work. Somehow she managed to stumble and plowed her face into the sand. She found the energy to lift her eyes a few inches and looked behind her. She had managed to travel a whopping twelve feet before collapsing. She wasn't going to make it.

She stopped trying to move for a minute in favor of pondering her situation. If she couldn't make it to the water, she'd most likely die. Dying on her hands and knees; it wasn't exactly the way she pictured her dreams ending. She wondered idly why she expected her dreams to be nicer to her then life had been. 

Greg would be laughing so hard he'd be crying, if he could see her now. Her old second-in-command, he loved watching when she got in over her head. Thankfully, when he was done laughing he would always help her get out of trouble. She thought about him wistfully, wondering what he was doing now. Hopefully, he was treating her people well, keeping them alive. Maybe the war had finally ended; it had almost looked like it was going to happen before she was captured, before he had betrayed her.

She pushed the maudlin thoughts away, trying to concentrate on the problem before her. Her eyes were beginning to lose their focus. She blinked rapidly, but it didn't do her any good. Fear got her crawling again, but she kept falling before making any progress. Stubbornness kept her trying, but she had moved beyond the point where stubbornness was enough to keep her going. She could feel her body quitting on her, feel something breaking as her limbs ignored all commands to move. Instead of helping her towards her goal, they began to spasm, jerking weakly in all directions. She was still trying to move towards the water when she slipped into unconsciousness.

*************************************************************************

Knives looked up from his brooding and initially couldn't see the vermin. Frowning, he looked harder, and was surprised to see her sprawled on the sand. She didn't seem to be moving. That was odd; she was always moving, always full of energy. Yet there she was, a still shape collapsed on the sand. Maybe she had broken when he dropped her. Curious, he wandered over and looked down at her. He couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. 

He kneeled next to her head and put his hand in front of her nose. Yes, she was still breathing, but not easily. He placed his hand on her forehead, feeling the cold and clammy skin. He wiped his hand and stood up. She wasn't healthy, that much was obvious. He didn't know what her problem was, as he didn't care enough about the ailments of vermin to have ever made a study, but his guess was shock. He glanced at the nearby pool of water, then sighed. He went and rummaged in his bag until he found a cup. He filled it, then returned to her and dumped it on her head. She didn't respond. He sighed again and set the cup down. He picked her up and moved her to the shade, propping her into a seated position before getting another glass of water.

This one he tried to pour down the inside of her, but it was not an easy task. The angle was wrong for pouring something down her throat when she was sitting against the rocks, so he shoved her around until her head was resting on her shoulder. The laxness of her unconscious body kept her from swallowing. Much of what went in her mouth dribbled out the sides and off her chin, making an awful mess on both of them. Finally he got enough down her for her to begin swallowing on her own. Unfortunately, by the time she could take small sips he had run out of water again. When he tried moving her, she let out a pitiful whimper and snuggled closer, unwilling to let him leave.

He looked down at her unguarded face and wondered just how tough she really was. He wouldn't whimper, or snuggle, or do anything quite so demeaning, no matter how sick he was. He also wouldn't let himself get this sick. She was obviously dehydrated, so this illness of hers was her fault. He had never courted death the way this woman seemed to, and didn't understand why she insisted on weakening herself like this. He pushed her out of his lap and ignored the noises she made. 

He coaxed another cup of water down her throat before setting the cup down. He wanted to lay her on the sand, but she seemed reluctant to move. Since humans derived comfort from touch he held her, hoping that it might make her feel better faster. She was of no use to him broken like this.

************************************************************************

Waking up was harder then usual. Sleep seemed reluctant to let her go. She was trying to join the world of conscious people, but it was a difficult fight, a fight made even harder by her confusion. She wasn't sure why she was asleep, but she was fairly certain that she wasn't supposed to be. Something felt wrong, somehow, and that wrongness made her want to relax and sink back into unconsciousness. She didn't want to confront whatever wasn't right, but had learned that ignoring problems rarely made them go away. She struggled against the feeling of lethargy and managed to wake up enough to begin to feel that things were really wrong.

One of the first things she realized was that she was being held. It felt nice, and warm, and safe. She would have been willing to sit like that for a good while longer, but as soon as she stopped struggling to wake up she began to fall asleep again. As she forced herself to wake up, she began to wonder just who was holding her. It couldn't be Greg, as he always smelled of aftershave, and whoever this was, he certainly didn't have a chemical scent. No, it was a much softer scent, but spicy. It was almost like cinnamon, but different, more exotic. It was strange; she felt like she should be able to identify it, but she couldn't. It was wonderful, and she inhaled deeply, trying to imprint the smell on her senses. Her memory could supply her with no matches no matter how hard she tried to find one. Trying to puzzle it out woke her up further, as she tried to identify both the scent and the man holding her.

She figured out who it was as the memory of the last few months hit her in a rush, and hot on its heels came a crashing headache. Death, Knives, teaching, links, shakes. . . Knives. She must be in his arms. She groaned and tried to push away, but she was too weak to do much more then squirm. Her best efforts got her nowhere, but they did attract his attention.

"Stop that," Knives said testily. Rather then calm her, his words put her into a panic and she tried harder to get away. He tightened his grip on her and waited. She wore herself out before making any headway, and finally subsided into a sulky silence. She would have glared at him if she could open her eyes. 

She started to speak, but her voice came out as an unintelligible rasp. She swallowed and tried again.

"Let me go," she demanded as strongly as she could.

"Why?" he asked. "I'm not hurting you."

"I don't trust you," she said.

She could hear the smile in his voice as he replied. "At the moment, I don't see what that has to do with anything. I could kill you right now, and you couldn't stop me." He paused and waited for her to make a comment, but continued when she stayed silent. "If I wanted you dead, I could have just ignored you. You are useful to me for the moment; I will not let you escape."

That was logic she could accept from him. Enlightened self-interest didn't scare her; she was used to that. Altruism worried her. There was always some hidden catch, something that bound you, a debt needing repayment. She had enough debts to repay that she was glad to not be adding to the balance. She relaxed against him.

"What happened?" asked Knives after a moment.

"You called it earlier. I climbed up there and got drunk," Kiley lied. 

His arm tightened painfully around her, a warning. "You have no alcohol here," he said coldly. "I want to know what really happened."

She sighed. She mumbled something, but Knives squeezed her even tighter, hurting her already sore shoulders, so she tried enunciating. "I got the shakes," she said.

"That isn't quite an answer," he cautioned.

She turned her head away and continued. "Whenever you do something like mind rape, like what we did yesterday, something evil and wrong, you get the shakes. I think it has something to do with violating the mental space of others, a psychic defense system, if you will, but no one knows for sure. The more violent the offense, the worse the shakes."

Knives thought for a moment, then commented, "I didn't get the shakes."

She blushed faintly and turned her head some more. 

"I took them from you. I figured, I was used to them, I could handle them. I didn't want to hear you whine," she finished up lamely.

"You took them from me," he said flatly, a statement instead of a question.

"Yeah," she said softly.

"Why?" he prodded, making her answer. Her discomfort was obvious, but he didn't care. He wanted to know; anything else was not his problem.

"I figured that I was going to suffer anyway, so I might as well let one of us have a decent night's sleep. Besides, I didn't want you to think I was attacking you or anything. It seemed safer if I just took your pain. It just ended up being harder then I had anticipated."

"So, you would put yourself though agony to not have to deal with my anger?" he asked.

"It's more like I didn't want to have to hear you whine," she said, trying for a flippant tone, but falling flat.

They both fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. Knives wondered anew at the perplexities of this human. Kiley wondered if she had done the right thing by taking the shakes from Knives, and realized she was thirsty.

"Do you have any water?" she asked, and was rewarded with a cool cup at her lips. She drank greedily.

"Thank you," she said when the cup was empty.

Knives looked at her, then lowered her to the sand and walked away. Kiley opened her eyes and wondered what she had said wrong this time as she watched him go. Inexplicably, she missed the feel of his arms around her.

Kiley contemplated taking another little nap, but decided that she was more thirsty then tired. Moments dragged by as she waited for Knives to come back with some water, but she gave up the wait when he settled down for a nap of his own. Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet and walked to the pool. Her gait was slow and halting but she managed to not fall. She collapsed slowly at the edge, more a controlled fall then actually losing control, and dipped her hand in the water. Too much was falling from her hand as she brought it to her mouth, so she leaned over and drank. 

She lifted her head after her stomach was full and sloshy, and looked in the pool. The water was clear and deceptively shallow. The bottom of the basin looked close enough to touch, but she knew she could put her arm in the water up to her shoulder and not reach the bottom. On a whim, she took a deep breath and stuck her head in. The cool water was like heaven on her face, and there was something about looking underwater that had always fascinated her. Water was so close to air, but so different. It made everything softer, dimmer then air; sounds traveled to her ears differently, normal sounds taking on whole new dimensions.

She stayed down there, letting her mind wander in a world so unlike the one of air, using the novelty as a barrier between her and thoughts she would rather not peruse. It was nice underwater, safe. She felt herself falling asleep and didn't fight the feeling. Soon enough she would rejoin the air world. For now, she was luxuriating in the environment that had always called to her.

Then she was ripped from it. Her startlement caused her to inhale water before her face reemerged in the air, so she was coughing and spluttering as Knives turned her around. He was glaring at her, and she was more then angry enough to return the stare.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he asked.

Surprise caused her to widen her eyes. "What, do you think I was trying to kill myself?" she asked incredulously. 

At the look on his face, she laughed, her anger falling from her like the water dripping off her face. "I can hold my breath for seven minutes without discomfort. If I wanted to kill myself, I would have had to be underwater a little longer then that," she explained.

"Then why were you sitting with your face in the water?" he asked with a shake. It was violent enough to rattle her teeth, but she didn't take offense. It was just his way of showing he cared.

"I like water," she said simply. "I like the feel of it, the look of things in it. I figured I might as well enjoy the pool until I wasn't thirsty anymore."

Knives released his grip on the nape of her neck. Her legs were too shaky to support her and she collapsed to the sand again.

"You keep that up and I'm going to one big bruise," she complained.

He said nothing, merely stared down at her, his face unreadable. She looked at him with annoyance, but gradually schooled her expression into impassiveness as well. 

"Do you strive to be annoying?" he finally asked.

The question startled another laugh out of her, but she cut it off after one quick bark. It was a serious question and deserved a serious answer. She actually pondered for a moment before replying, making sure the answer was given the thought it deserved.

"No, I don't try to be annoying. But I have spent a good portion of my life not caring if I annoyed people or not. I don't give the effect my actions might have on others much thought. I just don't care that much for other people to base my actions on their reactions. Most people don't deserve such consideration," she said.

"I do," said Knives coldly.

Kiley didn't respond with anything other then a small smile this time.

Knives thought over what she said, then sat down in front of her. He settled in his learning pose and waited.

"What?" she asked. "Do you really think I'm in any condition to teach you at the moment?"

Knives arched one brow and responded. "Will it kill you?"

Kiley rolled her eyes. "No," she started. She would have said more but Knives cut her off.

"Anything else does not concern me. Learning from you does. I want to make those lights," he demanded.

Kiley looked at his eyes, trying to judge how determined he was. She sighed, then complied, forcing herself to sit up and link.

When the link was over, she collapsed back onto the sand, her head hitting the edge between the rock and the water.

"Ow," she said, but didn't move. All the energy she had recovered that afternoon had disappeared. She consoled herself with the thought that at least this time she was near the water and wouldn't have to move.

When Kiley woke up again, it was night. Knives had ringed the oasis with lights of all colors, creating a festive air that was probably accidental. Globes of blues and greens were draped on the rocks, with tiny, twinkling gold and silver lights forming arches in between. Reds, purples, and more golds dotted the air in the ring, their lights all but obscuring the stars. These last lights danced in lazy patterns, slowly swirling through the air in a glorious haze. They formed languid arrangements of mathematical precision, art made by a mind focused on logic and the world that could be understood with the senses.

Kiley lazily lifted a finger and created silver balls of light at the tip, shooting them into the pattern, altering what Knives had created without changing its basic nature. She juggled them randomly through the structure, highlighting some elements that might have been obscured otherwise, adding an element of chaos that accentuated rather then detracted from the whole. She drew music out of the air, a composition of the moment that merged with the play of lights and blended flawlessly. Her eyes looked to the sky alone, watching only what danced before her, not caring for the moment that Knives was the creator of this piece of art she was changing. He might have been jealous, but she thought not. They were harmonizing, for once acting in concert and not against each other, and what they created was beautiful.

The tune was simple, yet complex, a six note theme repeating yet changing slightly with each repetition. It was backed by a slow swell of sound that coordinated with the major themes of the movement of the lights. Time slowed then disappeared altogether as the music overwhelmed all other senses. There was only an infinite now supported by beauty and light. The end result was a light show that surpassed anything she had ever been a part of. It was impromptu and entirely random on her part, but it felt right. The pattern established by Knives gave her room to play as her heart desired, moving in and out of patterns with ease tempered with whimsy. It had been a long time since she had innocently played, and never like this, never with this feeling of making something special.

Somehow, without thought or design, both the lights and the music moved to a climax. The soft sounds crescendoed and echoed off the rocks, the echoes blending into the music until it was a counterpoint to the tune. The lights grew brighter and flew faster through the air, twirling along like formal dancers at a ball. Then the peak was over, and things began to slow, began to reemerge in time.

Their pageant of light did not stop, but slowly faded back into time before passing away to a point where it could no longer be sensed outside of memory. The music softened away until it was only heard in the mind, and the dance of the lights slowed until the eye could no longer track it. Finally, everything slowed to stasis, both pattern and the random stopping, ending, finding completion.

She finally looked over at Knives. Her face was flushed with pleasure, but it faded as she met his eyes. They were so cold; they were like chips of ice in his face. He stared at her, but his expression gave nothing away. She began to wonder if she had done something wrong. Surely if she had, he would have halted his part of the symphony, would not have continued if she had been interfering. Her expression faded to confusion, and then to a mask much like the one Knives sported.

What was his problem? Was he upset that a human had contributed to a thing of such beauty? Elitist snob. Sick of his prejudices, she indulged in a bit of whimsy and stuck her tongue out at him.

He sniffed loudly and turned away. Kiley shook herself out of the dregs of the trancelike state the music had invoked. She dragged her sad and sorry butt over to her supplies and ate until she was replete. While she ate, her eyes drifted skyward, and her heart ached to see the magic that was already fading into the coldness of the desert night. The stars twinkled down through the lights that grew ever fewer as Knives slowly snuffed them out. She imagined their coldness, staring down on an unlovely world. She stopped looking as she felt depression settling in, willing the feeling of joy from the moment before to stay with her a while longer. When her stomach was full, she rolled herself in her blanket and slept. 

She didn't even notice when Knives snuffed the lights so she could sleep better.

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Knives looked over at the still form of the woman. How dare she intrude on his practice? To make just a few of these lights had been child's play, but making and holding so many had taxed even him, and he had been testing his control when she woke up and decided to interfere. He had been tempted to stop when she first joined in, but decided to not let her obstruction change his plans. Altering the desires of a superior being to fit the whims of vermin had always struck him as a ludicrous way of spending time. Then she had changed the paradigm when she created that music, and it became less an exercise in control then a work of art. 

As soon as it changed into the realm of the subjective he became angry. Art was for weaklings, humans, creatures who needed to change the world to find beauty instead of appreciating what was there. He would have stopped then, but the music touched him, held him, and kept him from stopping. It made him alter his patterns, shape them to the boundaries set up by the notes, made him frame his actions around what she composed.

He hated it.

The worst thing was how happy she had looked when the damn thing had finally finished. Her face glowed and her posture was more relaxed then he had ever seen. She had enjoyed that exercise in torture. He had stared at her, trying to see if she had done something that had made him participate in that mockery of life. He could not believe that any part of him would have participated had it not been compelled, but he could find no evidence that she was the source of that coercion. Watching her, he concluded that she was hiding nothing, or at least nothing of that magnitude. She was too open and relaxed to have controlled him. 

If nothing else, he was sure by now that she was not the sort of person who could manipulate others with impunity. She had some of those morals that humans liked to drape around themselves, trappings of false decency that they used to convince themselves that they were more then animals. It always stuck him as funny that humans who could be strong emasculated themselves in the pursuit of justice or morality, when what they should do is destroy the weak. Denying their animal nature did them no good in the end; they would either have to break the bonds they embraced or be ground under the heel of those who did not subscribe to their weakness.

She didn't strike him as the type of person who would meekly succumb to anyone. It would be interesting to see how she handled compromising her values. Most humans who carried morals with them hated to have to give them up, but he wasn't so sure about her. That one night, when he had caught up to her, he caught a glimpse of the coldness of her soul. It excited him; he wanted to see more. Unfortunately, she didn't seem to care much for her own well-being, but once they reached a place with more people, he would have to see if her could see more of that delightful ice.

On a whim, he wandered over to where she slept. Looking down at her, he reflected again on how easy it would be to kill her. In human terms, she was quite tough, but he knew that it would be simple for him to end her life if he so desired. She was so fragile, clinging to life even when she knew that life was not worth living. Did she greet sleep each night as an escape from this hell world? Many people did, he knew, yet so many kept waking up the next morning. It made no sense.

Not for the first time he wondered why more humans didn't end their miserable lives. Was this existence they stole so much more to be preferred then the sweet silence of the grave? Was the struggle to see another day worth the degrading actions one must perform just to be granted the right to fight again? He didn't know the answers to these questions, and quite frankly didn't care to know. He didn't concern himself that much with the motivations of humans outside of knowing how to use them to predict their moves. Devoting any more of his thought or his time to the puzzle was more then they deserved.

She shivered as a cool breeze blew through the oasis. The blanket she huddled under was scant protection against the cold of the desert. Her face had taken on an unhealthy sheen again. Knives leaned over and tested the temperature of her skin. It was cooler then it should have been. Likely, she was developing a case of hypothermia. He stood and looked down at her. Keeping this human well was getting to be a chore. He turned and walked away, leaving her cold and alone.

But not for long. A couple minutes later he returned, his own bedding piled in his arms. He remade his bed near her, settling to the sand, his back to her. Carefully, so as not to wake her up and have to deal with any questions, he scooted closer, willing to share a little heat if it meant she would be well enough to answer a few questions tomorrow. He had so many he wished to ask, and if she spent most of the day unconscious he wouldn't get any answers.

His back neared hers, and then he stopped, willing to radiate heat, but not wiling to touch her. Therefore, he was not pleased when she sighed and shifted closer to him, touching her back to his. He would have pulled away, but he could feel the muscles of her back relaxing as they drew in his body heat. Her shivering began to ease, but did not subside completely. He decided to wait to move away until after she quit shivering, but fell asleep himself before that came to pass.

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Kiley woke up slowly, reveling in the feeling of warmth. She loved waking up next to someone, the feel of their body near hers. There was something incredibly intimate about surrendering yourself, trusting someone while you slumbered. A lot of people liked to say that she never trusted anyone, but that wasn't right. She trusted lots of people. She just could rarely trust them far enough to sleep near them. And while she trusted a few people with her life, she could never trust anyone with her heart.

No, she trusted people. She trusted them to betray her. They always did; it wasn't like she kept herself apart from the world without good reason. No one liked her, and while she couldn't make herself enjoy the fact, she had accepted it a long time ago. People simply didn't like her. For most of them, it was her past that made them turn away in revulsion. Others just couldn't stand her independent spirit. Some acted like her life was a betrayal of all they held dear. 

So it was no surprise that all these people who didn't like her felt that she couldn't trust them in return. They would be even more surprised to learn that she rather liked most of the people she met, even when they hated her. It was never very hard to find something to like about someone, even when they were your enemies. And finding something to like in the people around her helped keep her form killing them when they pissed her off. Which all in all was a good thing.

She moved slightly away from the presence at her back, trying not to disturb whoever it was. She stretched, feeling sore all over and not quite sure why. She rolled over, and at first couldn't figure out who was sleeping next to her. It was a guy, but she didn't know any blonde men with shoulders like a god's. Yummy. Her mind roamed idly, trying to attach a name to the body. If it weren't for those shoulders he looked almost like Mike. She was tempted to lift the blanket to see if the rest of the body matched. He arm snaked forward to lift the covers for a peek, but sudden realization swept cold shivers through her body. 

Oh, god. The past year crashed down on her in an instant. She kept forgetting it, forgetting the horror. She supposed it was her mind's way of protecting her, but losing those precious moments of forgetfulness was beginning to crush her. The agony seemed worse when so starkly contrasted with what she had lost. She drew her arm back and rolled so her back was to him again. She was careful not to touch him, not wanting to take that sort of liberty.

The calm happiness of waking up next to an attractive man had vanished, leaving a cold disappointment that rolled through her in waves. It was gone, it was all gone. That life she had carved out for herself, the acceptance, the feeling of belonging, it was all gone. She couldn't help but remember the pain, the fresh scars that every day in captivity had placed on her soul, and she was faced again with the betrayal of all her dreams. 

She wanted to rage against the unfairness of it all, scream to the heavens and have them listen. She didn't, just as she hadn't every other time the notion took her. Railing against fate was pointless. What was done was done, and not worth obsessing over. She knew that, and the knowledge had helped her escape the torments of her childhood, but it was hard for her to divorce herself from the only thing close to happiness she had even known.

She had been feared, that's true, but it was only awe. She enjoyed how people watched her and envied, knowing that they could never match her superhuman grace. It annoyed her that they attributed such feats of strength and agility to her heritage and not hard work, but she was pleased with how she had upheld her family pride. She was respected, as a good leader should be. Anyone in her unit knew that she was firm, expecting immediate obedience, but they also knew she was entirely fair. The fact that she had saved most of their lives at one time or another helped as well, but all of her dealings with them were just, and they knew it. She would risk everything for someone who held her loyalty, and that inspired the same reaction in others. And she had been viewed as a bit of a hero, after all the time she had risked her life and returned. They had named her after her father, calling her his daughter in spirit as well as blood. Nothing could have pleased her more. She hadn't been happy, exactly, as there was no place in her life for such a soft emotion, but she sometimes felt she might have been happy, had things been only a little different. If nothing else she was content with what she had.

And then it was all torn from her. The past she had shut away behind her had been dragged out into the present, paraded before the world for all to see and judge her. They viewed her crimes and hated her, hated that she had made them respect her, hated that she had tried to escape the rightful justice that her crimes had dictated. Some few saw her more recent actions as a measure of atonement, but all agreed that she could never atone for her sins, not if she lived a thousand years.

She agreed with them. Her soul was black with her sins. She just wondered what else she was supposed to do. She no longer wished to commit such crimes, to do such awful deeds that she hated herself after. Did punishment equate with justice? What punishment could even equal her misdeeds? Even taking her life had obviously not been enough, since she was still here, paying for them beyond her first death. If she died here, would that finally be the end? Or would she continue, floating through the dimensions from one sort of torment to another?

She loved how the reformed villains in fiction could always find some great death or final sacrifice, something the surviving heroes could point to and remark that such an exit paid for all the evil they had done. She had tried that, tried to find that death that exonerated her, but it eluded her. She tried to revere life, to protect the innocent and occasionally the foolish from themselves as a hero should. She always put herself in the path of the greatest harm, willing to take the damage that someone else might escape unscathed. But it was never enough. 

She wasn't able to equate a life saved with one she had taken, not one life, or two, or ten. Everyone she had killed was an indelible stain on her soul, and all the lives she saved were nothing in comparison. She could never make things right again; it was impossible to change the past, to bring back life once it had fled. She wished that just once, someone would help her find an answer, a response that would help heal the hemorrhage in her heart. Someone must know how to heal the soul of someone who was no longer evil, but had forfeited the right to ever be good.


	10. The teaching begins

I do -- oh, no, wait-- don't own Trigun.

Heh. I need sleep, but I'm writing this instead. So if it's a bit less then wonderful, it's because I'm brain dead, and cold, and tired, and I'm bleeding again. I'm off to find a band-aid. Enjoy the chapter.

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That day saw Kiley teaching Knives the basics of healing. The simplest part was learning how to encourage cell growth. The difficult part was control. Ungoverned growth was just a nicer way of saying cancer, and while it was an attack and therefore what Knives was looking for in her teachings, it wasn't the focus of the day's lesson. When she had broached the theme of the lesson to him, he had wanted to practice on her, so she wouldn't be so broken as to pass out again. While she almost appreciated the sentiment and she didn't doubt that Knives had the ability to learn the necessary degree of control, she also wasn't volunteering to be his first patient. Instead they practiced on some of the native flora. Kiley collected sixteen seeds and placed them in a row on the sand. She linked and showed him how to encourage growth, how to entice a plant to maturity in a matter of moments. She took it slowly so he could see and hopefully understand the entire process.

Knives' first effort was a miserable failure. Looking at the misshapen mass that sat in a lump near the pool was a hard task, but Kiley forced herself to not avert her eyes. 

"That-- didn't go as well as it could have," she said tactfully.

Knives merely glared at her and moved on to the next seed. He did better with this one, as it looked like a plant when he was done, but the poor thing was spindly and unwell. Kiley kept her mouth shut as Knives moved on to the next seed.

Twelve plants and almost-plants later, Knives finally grew a plant healthy and hale in all its aspects. Twelve minutes elapsed between seed and full-grown fern, a miniscule period of time when contrasted with the amount of days it took the plants to grow normally. He shot a prideful glance at Kiley, as if her silent presence had been judging his past efforts. She had actually been impressed with the speed of his learning, not that she would ever say so.

"This is simple," he boasted. "When will you teach me something worth learning?"

Kiley merely smiled and picked up the last of the seeds they had gathered. She pushed it into the sand with the tip of her pinky finger and concentrated for a moment. Movement erupted from the ground as she coaxed rapid growth from the seed. Fifteen seconds later, a mature and beautiful specimen of the plant lingered at her fingertips. She brushed them against the full and gorgeous leaves before pulling them away and smiling at Knives.

"Learning something is easy. Learning to do something well takes time," she said simply.

"If I felt that these little tricks of yours were worth my time, I might put in the effort to learn them well. But these are nothing, not worth doing in the first place," he said coldly.

Kiley arched an eyebrow. "Nothing? Knives, I never suspected that you lacked an imagination."

At his affronted look, Kiley laughed. "Everything I have taught you so far have been child's tricks, that's true. But that's because you teach children the basics. From what I have taught you so far, you can inflict great amounts of harm. Yesterday's lights? They are cold, quite cold when they touch flesh. It's an easy weapon. Today? Forced cellular growth can kill. You know that I killed myself merely by growing mold in my lungs. It was a child's trick, but it worked. I died."

He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "I wish to learn how to perform that stasis trick," he demanded.

Kiley looked at him incredulously. "You're kidding me," she said, but the look on his face convinced her otherwise. "There is no way that I'm going to try to teach you how to manipulate the space-time continuum when you have had four days of practice. Do you think I am crazy? You've seen how difficult the easy stuff is to master," she said, pointing the poor mangled almost-plants Knives had created. "Why do you think that a stasis field is going to be a good next step?"

Knives clearly didn't want to listen to anything resembling reason, but she thought she would give it one last try.

"Knives, you have already mastered the first year's worth of training. A year in four days; that isn't shabby. Most people never get advanced enough in their studies to come anywhere near the level of technique required for a stasis field. It took me twenty years of hard study before I was willing to risk my first one. Twenty years after learning the basics that you are learning now, that is. If you think I can impart all that knowledge in one sitting, and if you think you can assimilate it all, think again," she said, pointing at the first mess he had created. 

"That would be you. Stasis fields that go wrong don't do anything to the objects they envelop. They destroy you. I was one of three hundred and forty-seven people on earth that ever risked creating a stasis field. One hundred and twenty three of those who tried killed themselves with their first try. Another fifty-three died on their second or third attempt. Three people had ever made more them me, out of over eleven billion. No one has ever tried a stasis field under the sorts of conditions I have, and lived to tell about it. No one else has even tried, has been sure enough of their control to run the risks I do. I made it look easy because I am an expert; I am the very best at their creation, ever. 

"Just because I can do something doesn't make it easy. I have studied, and practiced, and have performed and excelled under conditions that you have never even dreamed about, and I am still here to boast of it. I am one of the best at tricks, both in breadth of knowledge and depth, and if you were expecting to pick my brain in a week, or a month, or a year, you were quite mistaken. You think that what I've taught you is nothing? You're wrong. There are people who live their entire lives without knowing as much as what you have learned. 

"My job required me to be the best, to be flexible, and intelligent, capable, committed, and above all, I needed to know how to get myself out of every sort of trouble imaginable. There were people who were better then me in almost every area of study, but no one has ever matched me in the number of fields I could be named an expert in. It was my job, and it was my life to be the best I could, to know all that I could, and if you think that just because you are some almighty plant that you can just strip my brain of a lifetime's accumulated perfection, you are so wrong."

She didn't stick around to see his response but huffed off into the desert. She lost herself among the dunes and sat, hiding her head in her knees. What good was being the best if it only got her here?

She sat there, alternately staring at the sand off in the distance and the sand between her feet. If she were the whining type she would be complaining right now, but it seemed sort of pointless to spill out all the things that were bothering her to the desert. It didn't care, and right now what she really needed was something that would at least pretend to empathize with her plight.

Life just sucked, totally and completely. She sighed, and returned to obsessing over why she was so depressed. She wanted a vacation, a break from the relentless crap that had been pouring over her lately. Why was it too much to ask, that she be given a few days free from conflict? She spent her entire life fighting, and it got her nowhere. Idly, she wondered if a few days of peace were entirely out of the question. Just a week, maybe, where she wasn't fighting for her life or her sanity, or both. 

She felt more then heard Knives approach behind her, and watched the disturbed grains of sand tumble down the dune as he came to sit beside her. He didn't say anything, didn't even look at her, but stared off into the desert as well. She stared at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering what he was going to do now, but he did nothing. Nothing but stare out over the sand dunes that blanketed the horizon. 

"Do you try to be entirely frustrating?" she asked after a few minutes.

He sighed. "What did I do now?" 

"Oh, nothing in the past few minutes. Just, you seem to piss me off on the average of twice a day, and I was wondering if it was a native talent or if it was something you had to work at," she explained.

"With you, it's a natural response," he said.

They lapsed into silence for another few minutes.

"I guess we both are good at annoying the crap out of people," she offered. At his thoughtful nod, she continued. "Ever wonder what it would be like to be good at interacting with other people?"

"Sometimes," he replied. "Sometimes I wonder why my brother even bothers with you humans, if he sees something in you that I can't. Then I remember that you exist off the blood of my brothers, and don't care if there is anything in you worth notice. Parasites like you should die."

"Oh, and we're back to that again," she commented. "Knives, can you go a whole hour without obsessing on killing all the humans?"

"No."

"Wow. One hundred forty-nine years old, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year. . ." she started.

"Not on this planet," interjected Knives.

"Whatever. Not the point. You might want to try not thinking about it for a few hours, just to buck the trend."

"How can I?" he asked. "My people are dying, the life sucked out of them by you uncaring humans. My brother may ignore their plight, but I cannot."

Kiley laughed, a short, humorless bark. "One, you can't really be mad at me for any sins against your brethren. I just got here a few months ago, and don't think I've done too much oppressing since then. Two, if it's so hard for you to see plants used as power sources, why don't you teach someone how to use solar power? Or wind power? I mean, there are other resources available to power the cities, even if not as convenient as plant power. Humans do have a history of trying to go the easiest route, but we also don't like the idea of slavery. I know that the majority of people on this planet don't know what exactly is in the plants that makes power, let alone that it's a being, and even less so that the being might be sentient. You are damning an entire race for ignorance."

"They should know," he countered.

"How?" she shot back. "Some racial memory, perhaps? You killed off a good portion of the people in the ships when you crashed them, and then you have the audacity to be peeved when there are gaps in the knowledge that the survivors possess. Plant knowledge wasn't widespread when the ships left the earth, outside of the fact that a new power source had been discovered that could save the race. Then you kill off the people who know what was going on, and you spend the rest of your life slightly ticked off that the humans don't know what is happening under their noses. You want to know the first step to ending the slavery? You have to let people know they are doing something wrong."

He didn't look convinced, but did look thoughtful. She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Super-intelligent, and blinded by hatred. If she had a dollar, or she guessed it would be a double-dollar here, for all the times she had seen that, she would be a very rich woman.

She picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers. "There's an abundance of silica and sunshine on this planet. Solar power would work well, and even if it didn't replace the need for plant power, it would certainly ease the burden from their shoulders, giving them a chance to rest. Instead of helping, of looking for a peaceful solution, you automatically sought the greatest amount of bloodshed. For a superior being that sure is a primitive response.

"Knives, don't be willing to kill off an entire race for the actions of a few. You have had your revenge on those who have wronged you, and on their descendents, and unto the seventh generation. That's when the Jewish god finally gives up on punishing those who have done wrong. Maybe you should, too."

"I don't want to forgive you humans your ravages against nature and my brothers," said Knives quietly.

She chuckled. "You can't get too mad at people for ravaging this environment. You crashed the ships here, intending on using the planet to kill off any survivors. That they have managed to carve out a habitable portion of the planet is admirable, not despicable. And, hey, the burden on the surviving plants would have been less if they weren't so desperately needed for daily survival. You didn't think your actions through on the ship, and have spent the last century and a half cursing the humans for doing exactly what you would do in the same situation."

"I would not live off the blood of my brethren," Knives began, but she cut him off before he could say more.

"Yes, you would. You do. That ship of yours is plant powered. The only difference is that you don't need them to survive, and the humans do. So, which of you is the real parasite?"

"Humans." The answer was quick and decisive, and Kiley decided to let the matter drop. Arguing with a fanatic is a waste of your breath and their time, and while they had a surfeit of both, she abruptly found herself not caring.

No, it was much more fun to just be depressed, staring out across the desert then it was trying to argue with Knives.

Kiley was feeling a bit miffed. While Knives wasn't exactly chatty, she had left the oasis to be alone. Alone, not sitting next to the person she really didn't want to be anywhere near at the moment. She had also wanted to fume over the remarks he made earlier, and not the annoying racist behavior he has just exhibited. But since the racist comments made her angrier then his stubborn refusal to see her as anything other then a simpleton, she fumed over those. 

She hated racists, hated people who felt that some accident of birth made then ultimately superior to others. Granted, she felt that she was superior to a lot of people, but birthright had little to do with it. It was a combination of hard work, determination, and genetic luck, and she didn't hold with the notion that just because she had been born a genalt that she had any natural superiority over unaltered humans. She had known humans that were superior to genalts, and genalts superior to humans, and had spent her entire life fighting the notion that one was superior to the other. Racism disgusted her. She was much more concerned with what people did, and not how people were born. 

In her time as the leader of the Parameds, she had tried to sway people to her belief in superiority of actions, and not of birth, or race, or intelligence, or anything other then what you did with what you had. It was more important that you work well with those around you, not letting them down when they needed you to survive, then it was to be super smart or fast, or strong. Being better did no one any good if you couldn't apply your talents to help others. Most of the time, she succeeded in passing along her philosophy, and those rare cases that she couldn't sway to her cause, well, they didn't live much longer. She couldn't tolerate racists in her unit, and while she didn't set out to get them killed, trust in your fellows was an integral part of staying alive. If the people around you didn't have an active interest in seeing you come back alive, you generally didn't. Darwinian survival at it's most obvious, that was war. If it worked, you lived. If it didn't, well, chances of survival dwindled rapidly.

No, she hated racists, hated those who thought they were better then humans because their ancestors had been engineered to be better, and she hated the humans who felt they were better because no one had ever manipulated their genes. The conflict generated was a waste of time. People were people, no matter how they were born, or to what supposed race. Since the genalts and the humans could interbreed, she saw the protestations of separate races to be ludicrous, but the unending wars showed that few people shared her views. From full-out battles to guerilla warfare, the belief in birth superiority merely bled the best from both sides. If she could have stopped it, she would, but the best she could do was save the lives of the people who fought with her for equality, and pray that it made a difference.

She died fighting for equality, and since the universe possessed a sense of irony, she ended up with another racist. She glanced at Knives out of the corner of her eye, and wondered if maybe this time he was right. He really was a different race. An alien being, however difficult that was for her to fathom. He had been created as well, but for a different purpose then her ancestors. No one had tried to keep humanity in him, had thought that humanity would even be needed in a creature that would spend its entire life separated from the rest of the world. She wished she could figure out how his mind worked, find out if he thought differently from humans. His formative -- year -- had been spent among humans, and that obviously helped impress the human thought patterns on his mind. She knew they couldn't be too different, as they were able to link. No human had managed to link with any other type of mammal, not even the great apes, so they really could not think too differently, but every time she thought she might have figured out how he thought, he changed the rules on her. It was frustrating, maddening, and completely his style. She wondered if he did it on purpose. 

She brought her thoughts back to the topic du jour. Racism. She hated it with every fiber of her being. Knives embraced it with every fiber of his. She could put up with the constant put downs and little entendres that he directed her way to put her in her place. What she was having fresh problems with was teaching a racist how to better achieve genocide. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, but she couldn't see what choice she had. If she left now, if she could get away to a town, even, and that was unlikely, he would find her. She didn't want to contemplate the loss of life that would ensue if he was pissed off when he came after her. She didn't want to be responsible for those deaths.

But staying wasn't a great option, either. Teaching him only gave him the means to kill more people faster when he was finally done with her. The deaths after she trained him would dwarf the number he would kill if she left now. No one on this planet would be safe, not for long. Giving a fanatic weapons of mass destruction was never a good idea. They tended to use them and not care about the consequences. 

The easiest route would be killing herself, right now, before she taught him anything else. The danger was the knowledge she possessed, and if she was no longer here, that danger would pass. She searched her soul, trying to find the courage to end her life again. It was there, but she didn't have the necessary degree of determination. She wasn't afraid to leave this world, but she couldn't find the desire to do so. She had been running on willpower alone for a long time now, and was not surprised to find herself almost tapped out. While not ready to give up and not care at all, or at least not precisely ready for such ennui, she just couldn't care enough about the plight of the world to take the correct step. 

She wondered if that made her weak, or just tired. She should care, and she did, abstractly, but she didn't know enough people on this world to force herself to suicide for them. She was here, and real, but beyond the sands she could conceive of other people, but she could not see them as real, as existing with lives and hopes and dreams. Maybe she should try to believe in them, but she couldn't. Not to the degree that was needed for sacrifice. 

It was weird, not wanting to live, but not wanting to die, either. If she had a little more energy she might have enjoyed the freedom that gave her, but right now all she could see were the shackles that kept her here, near a man she loathed, and doing things that made her hate herself. 

She wondered anew why she had ever believed that dying would change anything in her life.

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Knives glanced at the female out of the corner of his eye. Her mien was pensive, and she was obviously thinking deeply on a subject that disturbed her. He wondered what upset her, and while he felt it likely had something to do with him, he was unwilling to assume anything when it came to her. Anytime he assumed something about her, she did her best to prove him wrong. It was cute, in an annoying sort of way. Much like her.

There was something about this woman irritated him. Actually, many things about her irritated him, but there were things about her that annoyed him that he couldn't even put a name to, and that aggravated him. Something made him come out here after her, something that he didn't understand. He had watched her leave, unconcerned, secure in the knowledge that she could not escape, sure that she was intelligent enough to not even try. But not much time elapsed before the oasis began to feel, wrong, empty. The space that seemed so small when she was there was suddenly echoingly large, as if his presence alone was not enough to fill it up. It was different without her, and when she left and stayed gone for a few minutes some feeling nagged at him. This feeling he couldn't name forced him out into the desert after her, and kept him here, even after he knew that she was not trying to get away.

He sat there and wondered if he should kill her now. She was beginning to affect him in ways that he could neither understand or control, and that made her dangerous. Idly her tried to think of what he would lose if he killed her off now, listing the possible assets against this uneasy feeling that plagued him. While he hadn't yet managed to gain much knowledge from her, he had learned of a new world of study and was confident that he could explore it. He might not learn on his own as fast as she could teach him, but she claimed that he had learned the basics, and he was inclined to believe that she had told him the truth. She was not as irreplaceable as she might like to believe, but it was true that killing her now would not be in his best interests. 

What was beginning to bother him was the fact that it was getting harder for him to picture the world without her around. While he may not have spent many days in her company, he had relived a good portion of her lifetime, and he would be lying to say that he had emerged untouched by what he had seen. He had quickly grown used to her presence, how quickly he could hardly believe, and a world without her seemed. . . odd. Not right. He had only spent time with her for a little over a week, but so much had happened in those days that they seemed to hold more time then they possibly could. He could still picture an Eden with only him and Vash, the plants rescued from the tyranny of the humans, but he could not picture the remainder of the human race's time on this planet without her around, somewhere. Likely, they would be enemies, and strangely he could picture himself fighting against her. Fighting, not merely killing. 

Somehow, she had been elevated from vermin to opponent in his mind, a place that he had never conceived of being filled by a mere human. The problem was, she kept showing herself as more then a mere vermin, kept surprising him with her insight and potential. If he could only convince her to work with him towards the eradication of the vermin, these odd feelings would not bother him so much. She would be such an asset to his cause, it would be a shame to kill her before he was certain that he could not change her mind.

Every time he felt he understood her enough to manipulate her, she either changed the rules or showed strength that she should not possess. It was obvious that she hated herself, but every time he tried to pry into that hole in her psyche, she ignored the weakness, somehow able to pretend that it wasn't there. She should be weak, he should be able to influence her, but somehow she managed to defend herself against everything he tired. 

By all rights, she should hate humans as much as he did. With what she had lived through, it was unbelievable that she could want to save anyone. They all deserted her, destroyed her, did nothing for her. That she could feel anything nearing compassion was amazing, let alone the degree of empathy that she showed. She should not care about anyone but herself, yet she did. It was so frustrating.

He could not have designed a better childhood, had his goal been to create someone who would help him in his crusade. That she could sit there and try to reason with him, to convince him that humans didn't need eradication, was amazing, and horribly annoying. She should be willing to help him, not trying to talk him out of the correct course of action.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had neglected to ask her a question that day. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye again. She was so obviously miserable, and seemed to be wrestling with some inner demon. Words sprang unbidden to his lips, tripping out into the silence before he had a chance to think on them or call them back.

"Why do you hate yourself so much?" he asked, then wondered why that could have been important to him, even for an instant. He debated taking the words back, but decided he would rather not let her know how much she was affecting his ability to reason. Perhaps it was only a temporary form of insanity, and would pass soon. 

Knives' question caught Kiley off guard. She turned and looked at him, unable to completely hide the shock she felt. Judging by the smirk on his face, he could see the shock in her eyes and was amused. Her eyes narrowed as the shock transmuted to anger.

"What makes you think I hate myself?" she retorted. 

"Did you think it didn't show?" he asked sardonically. "Every time you spoke of your death, there was no regret, only pride. You treat the end of your life as the last move of your final piece in some game, instead of with horror or regret. You feel that you deserved the death you received, and considering that it was a horrible way to die, you must hate yourself. If you didn't, you would be angered by the way you met your end, the torture and betrayal, but you treat it like something you were due."

"Hmm," she said, then fell into a thoughtful silence. Knives didn't interrupt, but kept the peace, willing to wait while she collected her thoughts. Kiley stared down at her knees, trying to find the words to express her feelings, trying to find some way to put her sins into words that didn't demean them. Finally, she raised her head, her eyes focused on the horizon, but seeing something inside her heart.

"I killed ten thousand people over the course of ten years," she said, then lapsed into silence again. Knives said nothing, willing her to continue, but aware that anything he might say could shut her up prematurely.

"I left my parent's house a little after midnight on my eighteenth birthday, and I joined the army. My stepfather had planned out my life. I was to be his assistant, his secretary, helping him in his daily tasks. He thought me effectively cowed, the perfect shadow. What he didn't know was that I had spent the past year plotting how to get out of his grasp. My days were monitored to the second, but I managed to gather the information needed without alerting anyone of my intention to bolt.

"There was to be a large celebration in the morning, as I was accepted into the upper echelons of higher learning. Once firmly ensconced in the halls of university, I would be out of the reach of the draft, and therefore forever under his control. I had four hours between midnight and when they would notice I was missing from my room, and I used then to get myself near the closest army recruiting station. I managed to hide until it opened at eight in the morning, and by 8:10 I was in the army. I had escaped my stepfather's control; even he could not take me out of the army's clutches.

"But life didn't get easy for me just because I had escaped one hell. Basic training is a hell of a different sort, and it was harder on me then the average recruit. My school years had been spent learning things a woman should know, how to run a family, and a household, and things of that type. It didn't prepare me in any way for early morning ten mile runs, or weapons training, or anything that the army was trying to instill in me. In my first day I earned the nickname Princess, both for my lineage and my inability to do any of the tasks required. 

"But I was very motivated. If I washed out, I would be going back to my stepfather's, and he would make my life even harder for having had the audacity to try to escape. By the end of the first week I was no longer in danger of being forced to leave. By the end of the second week I was in the top quarter of the recruits in my class. By the end of the fourth week, I was the all-around best, and the best in hand-to-hand combat and weapons use. I was defeating people who had received years of martial arts training, and I had come to the rapt attention of certain elements within the army. 

"As I entered the army, I was already being evaluated differently from those around me. My father, my biological father, was a bit of a hero. He was from a genalt line, but not a pure one. Something had mixed in him, creating a new talent, unique to him alone. He could sense danger, could tell when someone was trying to harm him and what direction the attack was coming from. This, coupled with the excellent reflexes that were his developed genalt heritage, were passed on to me, his only child. They avidly wanted to know if the genes bred true, but my stepfather had kept them from finding out. He claimed that it was wrong to test a child's reflexes, that they might not be fully developed until I was. As soon as I entered training, they threw tests my way, trying to determine the extent of what I had inherited. And they were pleased.

"It had bred true in me, and my reflexes made me more valuable then a normal recruit. After the second week, when it became obvious that I was a natural fighter, I began to be groomed for a very dangerous job.

"After basic training, I went immediately into a more advanced training regime; I entered assassin school. It didn't bother me that I was learning how to kill other people; I didn't see then as anything special. I hated everyone, and I believed that my superiors knew who needed to be killed. I allowed then to make me into nothing more then a tool. They sent me out on missions that grew ever deadlier, and I kept coming back. I did not care how much blood I spilled in pursuit of my victim; I didn't have the common honor that many male assassins shared. I killed women and children with impunity, but only if they got in my way. I didn't allow emotions to rule me, or obsessions to fuel me, but accepted my assignments and did not rest until they were completed.

"I was the perfect tool, committed to the cause, dedicated to my goals, and unaffected by anything resembling a moral code. That's why I hate myself. I let go of my own soul, and didn't even recognize the loss until it was too late to get it back."

"So why did you stop killing?" asked Knives. "Did you have an epiphany, or a spiritual experience, leaving you with the notion that all life is sacred? Did you meet someone who convinced you that killing is wrong? Or did you just grow tired of the blood on you hands?" His tone was sardonic, faintly mocking her pain.

Anger flashed through her, but it died in a heartbeat. As its ashes fell, a ironic humor took its place. Her tone was droll as she responded. "Knives, what sort of crap fiction do you read? I didn't stop killing because I suddenly grew a conscience, or looked at my bloodstained hands and saw something horribly wrong. That might sound really neat, but it's a bit farfetched. 

"I just got bored. There was no challenge anymore, no difficulty. That razor line where the adrenaline pumps and you must perform at your peak or die had disappeared, lost under a level of skill that was unparalleled, and reflexes that were inhuman. I was given a task, a kill, a series of kills, or a bloody massacre, and instead of exciting me, it bored me. I had been dissatisfied for over a year before I stopped, but I had set my goal of ten thousand lives in ten years. It seemed like such a nice number, one that no one would be able to beat."

He interrupted. "I killed more then that in ten hours," he said, not quite bragging, but definitely implying that releasing ten thousand souls was not difficult.

"Mmm. Well, I didn't have ships full of sleeping people I could crash into a harsh and barren world," she retorted. "And for such an easy set-up, you sure did a crappy job of execution. I mean, you left the ships with one stinking person awake, and she managed to screw you over royally, didn't she?"

"Shut up," he said, his voice cold. "Underestimating Rem because she was merely human is a mistake I have had to live with for years. I have not repeated it."

"No, you merely underestimate your brother," she said sardonically. "But I'm talking about me now, so stop with the interrupting.

"Anyway, I only killed people in my way, between me and my goal, and who were actually trying to harm me, plant boy, so ten thousand is not an insignificant number. So. I reached it, and afterwards had no reason to be their killer anymore. It was boring, and while I hadn't developed a conscience, I had realized that I was merely being used. While I was off playing assassin, my stepfather was consolidating his political power. A month before my tenth anniversary, I learned that he was now on the council that determined who I was sent after next. 

"Like hell was I working for him. So I quit. When they came for me, when it was time for my next assignment, I refused to go. Since a reluctant assassin is a useless tool, I was reassigned by the end of the week. 

"I found myself in the Parameds, the unit comprised of the dregs of the entire world army. This is where those who could not be silently or easily disposed of ended up. Assassins didn't get to retire because they were bored; we knew too many secrets to leave the army. Ever. Since the average life expectancy of a Paramed was four months, retirement wasn't going to be a problem for them. Also, and I think I might have said this before, Parameds were soldiers, but we were not allowed to use lethal force. When I was placed there, those who were trying to get rid of me thought that they had found the perfect solution. Either I would be killed because I couldn't fight back, or I would fight back, kill someone, and be legally sentenced to death. 

"They underestimated me. They had thought of me a tool for killing for so long, that they could not conceive that I would be able to survive without taking a life. But I was a killer because it excited me, because I enjoyed the rush. When I was reassigned, my past was blacked out. No one knew I had been an assassin. People figured that I had been in one of the elite special forces units, and had gone bad. I could leave the killing behind easily because I had discovered something new that excited me.

"I found the rush again when I walked death's edge and could not fight back. With that handicap, I felt that satisfaction you get when you know that you are the best, the rush that had been lacking, and with every mission that I returned from, I pissed off people who wanted to see me dead. It was a fun life, for a while. Months passed, and due to the large percentage of fatalities, I was promoted into a command position. It was only over a small squad, but keeping my people alive was a challenge, and I wanted to see if I could do what no one else had ever achieved. 

"I wanted to keep my people alive for a whole month. On my first day in command, we trained, and I tried to make them work together. That same day we were called out, and one of them died."

"Is that what made you value life?" interrupted Knives, clearly impatient.

Kiley punched his shoulder, almost lightly. "No, now shut up. It just annoyed me. First day, and I failed. So, the second day, I got another body, and I trained them again, trying to force them into a team. Since moral was understandably in the toilet in the Parameds, my efforts were not appreciated, but since I was in charge and had a reputation of someone you don't annoy, they listened. We had two whole days to train before our next deployment, and I worked them hard. 

"But they all came back. And they all came back the time after that, and they began to work harder when I trained them, accepting me. I used them, found their strengths and their weaknesses, and I managed to keep my unit together without a casualty for three weeks. Then I met my goal of a month, and a few days after that I was promoted again, and I got to start trying to train people all over again. 

"Somewhere in the next year, I began to place a value on human life again, or at least on the lives of my people. To begin with, it was purely selfish; they were damned hard to replace when they died on me, but after I was forced to interact with them, I began to miss some of them after they died, first for physical skills that added to the unit, and then for how the deaths of some affected the moral of the unit. Then I actually grew to almost like someone, and when she died, something in me broke, and I lost the detachment that had kept the world from affecting me.

"Death stopped being my friend and started being my enemy. I didn't grow a heart of a conscience overnight, but after that day I began to hate death. Valuing life came even later, but it all started when I lost someone I could have liked, had I given myself the chance."

Kiley lapsed into silence for a moment and pulled her thoughts out of the past. She pushed herself to her feet and stretched, feeling the vertebrae in her back pop as she pulled them up. Knives moved to stand as well, but she put a hand on his shoulder and firmly pushed him back down. 

"You stay here," she commanded, keeping her hand firmly on his shoulder and carefully not meeting his eyes so she could keep her tone flippant. If the tension under her fingers was any indication, she was on very dangerous ground. It would do for her to lose her nerve now. "I came out here to be alone for a while so I could mope. You interrupted me, and caught me in a talkative mood, so I suppose it was good for you. But I still need to mope, and I can't properly mope with someone else around. I'm going to go lose myself, and you can do whatever it is you do when you're alone. I'll be back when I'm done."

With that she took her hand off his shoulder and turned to walk away. She started off and suddenly found her face in the sand. Sputtering and blowing sand out of her nose, she kicked the leg that Knives had grabbed, trying to get him to let go. His grip only tightened, and began to move up her leg. She tried to flip on her back, but couldn't squirm into a better position before Knives had climbed on her back. He pressed one knee hard into her lower back, effectively pinning her in place. He grabbed her left arm and held it to the sand. She tucked her right arm under her body to keep it out of his grasp, so he substituted grabbing the back of her neck and shaking her head until her teeth rattled. 

"You have no right to do anything I do not allow you to do. You will go nowhere unless I allow it. You will do nothing if I do not tell you to. You will feel nothing I do not tell you to feel. And you will never touch me or try to hold me somewhere against my will. Is that clear, human?" The last word was an epithet, spit from his mouth like something vile. Each sentence was punctuated by another shake, and her eyes began to tear from having her nose smashed to the ground so many times.

Kiley spared a moment to realize that he was learning more then she had thought. By keeping her from being able to concentrate he neutralized the threat of her tricks. Or so he thought.

Knives found himself sprawled twenty feet away with no recollection of how he got there. Kiley was kneeling on his back, and his right arm was pinned to the ground. Her hand was on his neck, grinding his face into the sand. 

"Let's get something straight here. I have the right to do anything I feel like doing. I have the right to go anywhere I damn well please, and I will do whatever the hell I feel like doing. I will feel happy or sad if I feel like being happy or sad. But I do promise to not touch you ever again. I am not the sort of human you can boss around, plant boy, and is _that _clear?" Her voice was calm as she informed him of her version of the rules, but there was an underlying hiss that gave away her rage. 

She jumped back off of him, bruising his back, but more importantly getting out of his reach before he could get up. Knives stood up slowly and brushed the sand from his clothes. He spent a minute putting everything back in its place, then looked directly at her. She had expected that he would be upset, enraged, or even on the stringent side of pissed off. She hadn't predicted what she saw in his eyes, and she wasn't prepared for what he did next.

He was undeniably amused. When he took in the shock on her face, he began to chuckle. Even stranger, there was nothing remotely evil about the sound. Unsure, she backed up another couple paces. Knives began to laugh.

"Such spirit! I have never met anyone like you," he forced out through the chuckles. 

"I'm not surprised," she said slowly, looking for a reaction. "Not many people can actually fight back."

Knives laughed harder and wiped something from his eye. "That's not it. You take my words and throw them in my face." He laughed even harder, bending over with the force of the laughter. Kiley stared at him, not relaxing one iota. Whatever was so amusing was a joke whose punch line was beyond her. 

The laughter stopped suddenly, and Knives stood up straight. This time there was no mirth in his eyes.

"You need to learn that there are people in this life that are more powerful then you," he said seriously.

Kiley snorted. "Is that all? You need to learn that there are people you can't boss about. And that just because you are powerful doesn't mean you have the right to dictate how people are going to live their lives. And that just because you're strong doesn't mean you're right all the time."

Knives cocked his head to the side and asked, "Is that all?"

"No," replied Kiley seriously. "But those are the important ones for this conversation."

He looked at her seriously. She stared back, willing to let the stalemate last as long as possible. Something changed in his eyes, and he turned and walked back to the oasis. Kiley didn't relax until she lost sight of him, and even then only slowly descended from her readiness to fight. 

Finally, she pulled as much air into her lungs as she could, then let it out in a huge sigh, forcing the tension to leave her body with it. She threw herself onto the sand and tried to sulk again. It's difficult to feel sorry for yourself when you are trying to puzzle out the behavior of a crazy alien, but she was willing to give it the old college try.

******************************************************************************

Knives was in a good humor as he walked back to the oasis. The human was actually quite amusing, with her kittenish defiance, all spitting fury and tiny claws. But like the kitten she resembled, she was powerless before his might. Had he so chosen he could have beaten her into the ground again and again, however many times it might have taken to make his point, but he decided to abstain. She might be frustrating, but she was also spirited. He enjoyed the thought of breaking that spirit slowly, carefully paring away the layers of her defenses until she suddenly realized that she had no choice but to obey his commands. It had been so long since his last challenge; rushing this one would be a waste of an opportunity. It wasn't like he didn't have all the time he might possibly need, or anything else he needed to be doing at the moment.

Upon reentering the area they had claimed, he strolled over to her pack and rummaged through what she had. She wasn't likely returning for awhile, so he might as well take the opportunity to learn a little more about her. Carefully he pulled items out of the bag and laid them before him, looking for something he could not define. He sat back on his heels and pondered what he saw. Little defined what he could gather from what she possessed, as she left him with nothing that he had not seen before. 

She had a lot of ammunition, a few clothes, some food, and not much else. Practical, except for the garish pattern on her blanket, and completely lacking in any sort of clues to her preferences, save the obvious one of anonymity, and her desire to be well prepared for violence. He picked up a box of the ammunition and weighed it in his hand. A slow smile crept over his face, and he got to work sabotaging a few of her bullets. He took the powder out of a few, and mixed then back in the box. Her reaction to his tampering would be interesting, as well as how well she dealt with equipment failure. This box went on top when he carefully repacked her bag.

He stood up and brushed his hands on his legs, wanting the feel of the things he had touched to leave his fingertips and not quite succeeding. Had he been a bit less of an asshole, he might have been feeling guilt, but instead he felt only the slightest shadow of discomfort, which he easily brushed aside from his conscience. His gaze wandered the area, and he wondered what he should do now. His eye was caught by the spire that she liked to climb so much. He wondered if there might be something up there that he should know about, and so, after peering up the sides in search of the easiest route up, started to climb. When he reached the top, it was with renewed appreciation for her physical skills. The climb had not been hard, precisely, and was quite doable by a superior being, but he was more tired when he reached the end then he had expected to be. She made it look so easy that he was surprised that he wasn't as adept, and Knives resolved to practice a little more until his skills improved.

He stood and paced the top, looking for anything that might be out of place, but her found nothing. There were tracks all over the place, but he had already suspected that she was practicing her skills up here so as to be outside his attention; he received confirmation but learned nothing new. He wished that he could watch her again someday, and eyed the surrounding spires contemplatively. 

He finally sat and looked out into the desert. The horizon was very far away, and he idly computed the distance to the edge of the world. Iles and iles lay before him, iles and iles of almost featureless sand. He could see a small speck in the sand below that was most likely her, and he watched her do nothing for a while. The suns moved in the sky, and nothing of any account happened at all.

Ah, this was boring! He practiced some of the things she had taught him, but grew quickly jaded creating lights. A breeze was more practical under the heat of the suns, but after figuring out how to move the air without having to concentrate, he grew bored again.

Abruptly he stood up and walked to the edge of the spire. He looked down into the oasis, and contemplated the look of their temporary residence from this perspective for a moment. It was different from his regular view, but told him nothing new. No confidences were spilled by shifting his point of view, no secrets were written down there to be read from this vantage. He stared for a moment, willing to wait to see if anything changed, but realized the ludicrous nature of that idea. He sighed and climbed down to the desert floor, and wondered just what was so enjoyable about rock climbing that the woman would practice it at every opportunity.

He was restless and could not understand why. He had spent years alone, with no contact with any other being, even one as lowly developed as a vermin. And now, a few minutes out of the presence of that woman he was pacing and unable to concentrate. What was it about her that did this to him? 

He wanted was to possess her, her secrets, her actions, her knowledge, and her soul. Having her near but not under his control was maddening. The thought of her running off into the desert and not returning was making him edgy. This vermin was his, whether she acceded to the reality yet or not, and he did not let his things go lightly. 

He sat down by his less mobile possessions and closed his eyes. He contemplated the myriad ways that he could subdue that fighting spirit of hers without breaking the parts that would be useful to him.

********************************************************************************

Kiley stared out into the desert, trying to bring some sense of closure to her life. It was hard for to admit to herself that she had actually died, that she had killed herself and left her old life behind completely. There was a not insignificant part of her that believed that this world was only a dream, a phantasm created by a broken mind. She was more then a little afraid that any second she might be torn from here and returned to the shambles that her life had become, returned to a broken mind and body in a broken world. She could almost envision her eyes closing here and opening back in her featureless cell, with maybe the leering face of one of her captors on the screen taking his pleasure in her destruction. Then the wind would blow past her, and they dry scent of this planet would remind her of just how different is truly was.

And then there were moments that she wished she were only dreaming, and when she wished she could leave this dead planet behind and return to the verdant one that she had loved once upon a time. If sometimes she wondered if this place were real or not, the rest of the time the alien nature of this planet grated on her soul. She had been surrounded by life and never noticed that it was a luxury. Now, she was surrounded by a great emptiness that mirrored the condition of her soul. Not alive and not dead, it was just a barren plain where nothing could ever grow. She leaned back and stared up at the sky, squinting into the glare that bounced from the suns to the sand and back. No wonder people aged quickly on this planet; she thought. The heat was enough to leech the life from you.

She didn't really want to go back home, but she liked it there better then here. She slipped into her favorite daydream for a moment, of a place far away from people who wanted to use her, and the places that were drenched in blood and war, a place of trees and flowers, and with only one other person. She dreamed of her sanctuary, of her place of peace, filled only with her and her one true love.

The funny thing was she had never pictured the face of her one true love. No, when she dreamed, she imagined arms that held her tight, protecting her from the evils of the world, or a laugh that shared both her humor and her pain in equal measure, a partner who would compliment her, and succor her, and hold her close because he loved being near her. It was a dream that heartened her, and that betrayed her in equal measure, as it was what she wanted more then anything else and was what she knew she would never have.

She hated her hopes. Her mind was incredibly practical and capable, and she had worked hard to make sure that she needed no one to take care of her in any way, not to save her, or protect her, or to do anything for her. She was a completely independent spirit, needing no one to make her whole. But her heart was tainted by dreams of romance, dreams of a life where she didn't need to be the strongest or the best or the fastest or the superlative anything, because she had someone else who would support her enough that she could be less vigilant and not suffer from it. 

But that was only a dream. A happy dream, and one that eased her heart, but she was practical enough to know that dreams don't come true. She was plopped down on this world and told that she would fall in love with the first person she saw. Knives. Sure, why shouldn't one psychopathic killer fall in love with another? She was sure they could make great anarchy together, if it weren't for a few trivial details like she didn't enjoy killing, death, or destruction anymore, and he hated humans with an obsession. Other then that, and a few trifling other details like them both being too strong willed to ever make a couple, her too used to getting her own way, and him too used to forcing his way on everyone he meets, they would just be perfect together. Right, sure, and heavy on the sarcasm. 

Her heart had learned to dream in silence a long time ago. She wasn't going to look for love. Looking for love made you weak; trying to let someone close only increased the chances that you would be stabbed in the back. Love itself didn't scare her, but trying to find it did. Her soul was fragile and broken, and she didn't want to give anyone a chance to break it because she wasn't certain that she could survive the pain again. 

She was honest enough with herself to realize that she wouldn't pine away with loss, or kill herself because she couldn't go on alone. But she did know that there was a part of her that could die inside, that part of her that enjoyed life, that could see and appreciate beauty. She did not want to live with that part of her dead, so she protected it the only way she knew how. 

She had been told once, after being tested for a soul, that she was close to being Broken. She could feel for others, but couldn't relay her feelings to them. The end result was that she appeared soulless while her heart lived alone inside. The tester had advised her to learn how to relate to other people, and she would have tried, but there was never a chance. Between being betrayed by everyone around her, torture, death, and Knives, she just hadn't found the time to try to connect with other people. Maybe there was such a thing as fate, and some god like the thought of her lying in the warm sand, dreaming of love and misery.

She could picture that, a god manipulating space and time and universes, just to bring her here, just for this moment of dreams and depression. Maybe that's what gods did, why they created people in the first place, or allowed them to live after their genesis. Maybe it was like some cosmic game of playing with dolls, of manipulating lives to some great artistic goal. 

She hated gods, and hated art, and hated her life.

Then she got up and returned to the oasis, not happier, but a bit calmer inside, her depression eased by rage at the uncaring universe.

********************************************************************************

The next few days passed without much happening. Kiley taught Knives other ways of using an energy net to affect the physical world and a few more tricks of cell manipulation. Knives learned these tricks much like the others, with relative ease and a great deal of superiority directed towards his teacher. She did her best to not let Knives get under her skin, and tried to ignore him as much as she could.

The only problem was that there was not much to do at the oasis. She hadn't brought anything with her to occupy her mind or her hands, and there was only so much exercise one could do before slowly sliding into madness. She did spend a great deal of time trying to regain the edge of her skills, which had begun to lapse a small amount. Upon arriving on this planet her skills had been near their peak, but she had neglected to keep them there while she was running from Knives. So she trained herself, slowly regaining that edge, and tried daydreaming to fill the rest of the time. 

Thinking about nothing was hard for her. She had spent too many years scheming and plotting to have wasted much time dreaming and imagining how her life might have been different. Her days had been full of tension and terror for the most part, her spare time spent trying to change the world. None of her former life applied here; all her plans were dashed to nothing. She didn't know enough about the power structure on this world to even begin to try to picture herself in it, and found herself reluctant to pursue that line of thought. Here she was anonymous, a nonentity, a nobody. It was kind of nice to not have to worry about what other people were scheming. She realized that hadn't sought power for its own sake, but to try to bring about an end to the war. There was no war here, and no real threat of one that she knew of. The biggest threat to this planet was her student, and she still didn't know how to neutralize it. She didn't spend too much time dwelling on it; a solution would either present itself or not, and only time would tell. She would do her best, and likely that would be enough. It had been, up until now, and there was no reason to begin thinking that she might be outclassed now. No, no reason at all.

No, instead she spent her time daydreaming, thinking of things that she had never allowed herself to luxury to contemplate. Things like how nice it would be to own a pet, a kitten, maybe, or a dog. Something that she could take care of, but wouldn't need too much looking after. That might be nice. And a dog would probably like her, too, if she fed it enough. It might be nice to be liked. She spent some time imagining the feel of fur against her fingers, or a warm tongue on her face, or sweet puppy breath. But mostly she tried to picture what it would be like to be loved by something. It must be nice, she decided, and a dog would be safe to love. A dog wouldn't break your heart just to see if it could; it would love you if you fed it and loved it back. She had been told she could love. Maybe she should get a dog. Just for practice. 

While Kiley pondered puppies, Knives thought on deeper and darker things. He noticed that the woman had almost entirely ceased to speak after she returned from the desert. She did her best to have no contact with him, and for the most part he was fine with being left alone. It was strange, however, to be around a human who didn't try to chatter on at him all the time. You could not get most of them to shut up, and those who didn't talk tended to have something wrong with them. 

He would have enjoyed the silence more if he hadn't wanted to get more information from her. The things she had told him had given him more information he could use against her, but he still did not know what he could do to manipulate her. There was something, he was sure of it, but whatever it was still escaped him. Regardless, he spent his time trying to figure her out, and trying to learn as much as he could about what she was teaching him. Every new thing she taught him opened many new doors of opportunity, and his plans were multiplying at a rapid pace. Already he had discarded perfectly workable plans of death, mayhem, and destruction in favor of ones that would kill the humans faster.

At the end of the second day, he again contemplated killing her, but for different reasons then before. While he didn't doubt his ability to take care of her whenever the need might arise, he had gathered enough knowledge to almost assure success when he went against the vermin again. Even his brother would have no chance against him. The trouble with her was the unpredictability of her actions. She might, at any minute, decide to try to destroy him. That would be bothersome. She might try to escape him, and teach his brother these same tricks. That might actually be dangerous. As a human, she could not possess the skills needed to beat him, but his brother might become a threat again if he could learn these special tricks of hers. 

In the end, he just resolved to keep an eye on her. No human would be able to successfully deceive him, and any attempts at perfidy would be dealt with as they deserved. He remember the sight of her collapsed and dying body as she tried to reach the water and smiled. She would come to wish that she had died there; it would have been a much easier death then the one he had planned for her when all this was through.


	11. Searching for words

If you are looking for copyright violations, please leave now.

Hey. . . Whoa. Something *different* is happening.

*******************************************************************************

The day was nearing its end. Kiley and Knives had retired to their respective portions of the oasis, and after much rummaging through her bag, Kiley was compelled to call out a question.

"Knives? When are we going to a town again?"

He looked up, slightly surprised to be addressed by her. He didn't pause to think, but responded, "When you are done teaching me."

Kiley said nothing for a moment. "I'm done teaching you," she called out, but her tone was humorous. 

Sighing, Knives got up and walked over to her. Wherever this conversation was going, he didn't feel like yelling. He stopped near her and looked down at her. "What do you mean you are done?" he asked with only the faintest of overtones of menace.

"Well, if that what it takes to go to town," she started with a teasing tone in her voice, but found the rest of her statement disappearing in the face of his displeasure. "Knives," she continued more seriously, "I have run out of food. It's time to go get more, that's all. Since food is found in towns, that's where we need to go."

"You need food," Knives repeated, looking at her bag. 

"Yes, food." She pulled a squished and rather stale looking loaf of bread out from under a shirt. "This is the remainder of what I brought with me. I'm going to need more soon, or you won't have a teacher. You can starve quickly when doing tricks, and as much as I'm enjoying teaching you how to be an even better psychopath, I'm not going to kill myself to do so."

Knives looked at her silently for a moment, his face schooled into his favorite expression of unreadable. "It costs you energy to do these things?" 

"Yup. I work off calorie energy for my tricks, since that's the way I was born. I guess as a plant you don't have that limitation, huh?" His expression didn't change, and she nodded. "Figures. Can't you do something less then perfectly, just for a change?" Her tone was petulant, but Knives' expression relaxed enough to allow him a small smile. 

"No," he said, then tuned and walked away. "We will go to town tomorrow," he allowed as he walked away. Kiley suppressed a sigh and gnawed at the last of her bread. The thought of fresh food was enough to make her stomach grumble. Tomorrow, she promised it. You'll get something good tomorrow.

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The next morning dawned bright and clear, but since that was normal neither party in the oasis took much notice of it. Going somewhere else, anywhere else, lent an air of excitement to Kiley's morning ablutions. She was packed and ready to leave well before Knives. She did her best to hide her impatience, but Knives still grew annoyed.

"Can you sit still, vermin?" he growled out as she paced the ring of rocks.

Surprise halted her steps, and a bit of hurt. "You haven't called me vermin for days now," she pointed out, pouting a little,

"Obviously an oversight on my part," he growled out as he tightened the laces on his boot.

She resumed bouncing about on her toes. "Well, you can continue oversighting. I don't like being called a vermin. As your teacher, you should show me a little respect. Try worm, or insect if you feel the need for a term of endearment," she advised.

Knives looked up. "Vermin, quit bouncing about. We will leave when I feel like leaving, and the more you annoy me, the longer it will take. At this rate, you will starve before I am ready to go anywhere."

Kiley dropped to the ground and tried to meditate. Slowly she felt excitement drain from her, falling into the ground as she surrendered it. In its place she drew strength from the planet. It was the first time she had allowed the planet to seep into her, and she was surprised by the strength that she found. It was different from earth's power, but she was not surprised by that. That expected difference was what had kept her from attempting this before; she was afraid to find out just how weak life on this planet truly was, but it wasn't as bad as she thought. She had expected the planet to be weaker, somehow, then it was. She had learned that the strength of the world was directly related to the strength of the lives upon it, and this planet's life seemed almost as strong as what she was used to back on earth.

Puzzled, she followed the strength she could feel, and found most of it to be centered under the cities, with a few weaker spots that had to be the sand worms. Narrowing her search, she felt the life of the area immediately around the oasis. It was almost as strong here as in a city. Understanding nagged at the back of her mind, but she concentrated and looked even closer. 

She opened her outer eyes, and both types of sight beheld the same man. A cold sweat broke out over her body as she realized just how much power the plants possessed. 

He was looking at her oddly, ready to leave. She forced a smile and quickly scrambled to her feet.

"What were you doing?" he asked.

"Oh, just meditating," she replied airily, trying to recapture the mood of moments before. "Getting used to the planet and letting the planet get used to me."

Knives dismissed such concerns as beneath him and turned away. Kiley looked at the direction he was walking, the suns, the rocks, and then back at him.

"Are you going the wrong way?" she asked while picking up her bag.

"We are going somewhere new," he told her over his shoulder.

"Oh, new," she grumbled under her breath. "Just what I haven't had enough of lately." She did follow him, not having much choice in the matter, but she wondered what she was getting into this time. Somehow, following Knives about just didn't feel safe.

Kiley's eyes were wide and unguarded as she took in the scene before her. She hadn't imagined seeing such a bustling metropolis on this planet, and especially hadn't expected one to be this clean. The ever present dust was missing; the streets and sidewalks were clean and clear. Everywhere she looked was full of busy people concentrating on their lives, selling items and food in an open air market, or traveling purposefully about. The urge to jump in and explore took her, but one look at Knives' face held her back.

He was positively grim, his lips tight and the skin about his eyes drawn. He looked out over the thriving city and obviously didn't like what he saw. She looked again, trying to see what was bothering him, but only saw a peaceful city, with parks and people and. . . oh. Suddenly, she remembered just where the power that all these people and buildings, buses and parks came from. Where she saw a bustling metropolis, he saw leeches profiting off the blood of his people. 

Regardless of whatever they might be leeching, she was hungry and tired, and wanted an inn. As far as she was concerned, conscientious decisions could wait until after she was rested and fed. She turned slightly and snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. They instantly went from brooding to pissed, and he grabbed for her wrist, but missed. She looked at him with big, innocent eyes, both hands clasped firmly behind her back.

"Can we sleep indoors tonight?" she pleaded. "Someplace where they actually cook food, too?" She did her best to look pathetic and helpless, mostly to stay in practice, and not from any misguided notion that her expression might sway Knives. She was surprised that she actually managed to get him to roll his eyes before returning to looking at the city.

Kiley began to fidget while he brooded. The road here was boring, lined with boring rocks and not much else, but it was boring not much else. She had seen the boring rocks, and upon reflection they remained boring. She had not yet seen the city that was tantalizingly close, mocking her with its nearness. 

She looked around again, and with a sudden decision started walking into the city. Knives had grabbed her arm before she completed her third step. She looked at him, her expression guarded, and waited for him to say something.

He squeezed harder and glared at her. "You do not go anywhere without me," he told her. Sensing an opening, she tried reasoning with him.

"I am hungry, and tired. I want food and I want to sit down. I don't want to sit here and watch you brood while you decide whether or not to travel the last freaking mile into the city. We're here, let's go." She stared into his eyes, trying to force him to see that it was the only logical course of action.

His gaze dropped first. He sighed and dropped her arm, wiping his hand absently on his leg after letting go of her, and the pushed past her to lead the way into the city. She didn't push the issue; Knives obviously wasn't comfortable here. Annoying the critter with the power to level a city was all well and good while you were off in the middle of nowhere. It was quite another matter when you were actually in the metaphorical city. On the behalf of all the innocent people around her, she would refrain from annoying the plant.

Or at least those were her intentions. When she was dragged away from the marketplace, she began to wonder, and as they moved farther and farther into a seedy area of the city she began to get pissed.

"Knives," she said warningly as she stopped in the middle of one deserted street. "I want food and a bed, not a tour of the slums. I want a hotel that will make food that won't make me sick, and a bed with only me in it. I want to bathe with clean water, and I want to send someone out to clean my clothes with the expectation that they will all come back. I don't see any of that here."

He looked at her, his exasperation obvious. "You want much, vermin."

She smiled. "Yup. It's the soft little female in me. I want to be pampered and clean when we leave, not dirty and tired. I know it's just so much to ask," she said sarcastically, "but I'm just a fussy female." She held out a grimy hand, wrist limp, and feigned a swoon. 

He just stared. She rolled her eyes and looked around. Finding a suitable patch of wall she walked over and leaned against it. She wasn't going to move until he decided to go somewhere better.

Knives continued to stare. She busied herself with cleaning her fingernails, paying close attention to the cuticles. Finally he spoke. "You badger me to enter the city, making me move, and now you stop? What's to stop me from dragging you back to the oasis right now?"

The question was rhetorical, but she decided to answer it anyway. "You won't drag me out of here for the same reason you finally entered. I need food. That isn't going to change just because you don't like it here. If we go to another town, you lose even more time from teaching as we travel there. You don't want to waste any time, which is why we entered in the first place." She buffed her nails against her shirt.

"None of this convinces me that we need to go to a nice hotel. They ask questions at those sorts of places, questions neither of us are prepared to answer."

"Questions? What do they need to know besides how long we plan on staying and if we can pay? Neither of us look particularly dangerous; if we act like normal people for a few hours we'll do just fine. Come on Knives," she wheedled, "Showers. You know showers are nice."

"Fine," he said after reflection, and something in his voice warned her that she was pushing her luck. "But if we get run out of town, it will be your fault."

"We won't," she said reassuringly as they walked back the way they had come. "It will be fine."

An angry shout nearby disagreed with her claim.

Kiley's head swiveled towards the noise.

"Don't even think it," Knives cautioned, but he spoke to her retreating back. She wasn't running towards the noise, but was moving at a faster pace then he would have imagined. All thoughts of rest and pampering had obviously left her mind, and he was reminded again of the steel that lived beneath the annoying mannerisms she adopted. He set off after her, moving swiftly without running as well. He might as well learn what he could about her from this encounter, but he could not do that if she managed to get out of his sight. He rolled his eyes; the woman seemed made to find trouble and hadn't the good sense to leave it alone when she found it. 

They did not have to move far before finding the source of the disturbance. The shout had not been overly loud, and as far as he could tell no one else had responded to it. Most people who lived here had learned not to get involved with others' troubles, and at first glance, the trouble they found did not look serious. Kiley had stopped just prior to entering a small plaza created at the intersection of two streets. The plaza held a fountain, from which the residents of the area most likely drew their water, two men, and an oddly moving bag. A large man, dark haired and swarthy was trying to hoist the bag about, but its motions made it difficult to handle. His small, equally dark friend was trying to help by poking the bag to distract whatever was inside, but both efforts seemed to be meeting with little success. The shout had come from one of the men as he tried to manipulate the bag in a direction it did not want to go. 

Much quiet cursing accompanied the effort of the men to manhandle the sack. It moved too much to be slung over a shoulder, and squirmed to much to be easily held. As they stood and watched for a minute, the men managed to move the sack and its contents a full fifteen feet. Then the shorter of the two men caught a glimpse of them standing there. He warned his friend, and they set the bag down. It tried inching away, but the larger fellow stood on a corner and held it fast.

"You'd do well to be moving on now, friends," said the larger one, slowly. His buddy made an ostentations show of checking them over for weapons, concentrating on Knives and, aside from a quick glance, ignoring Kiley altogether. This lack of insight on his part coaxed a small smile to his lips but neither of them moved.

"I said, this is nothing to trouble yourself over." The larger man moved his hands out in front of him, placatingly. He tried to look harmless, but spoiled his efforts by shooting what he obviously felt was a significant glance at his friend who responded my moving his hands to a place where they were no longer visible.

"What's in the bag?" asked Kiley. Her voice was calm and level, and gave nothing away. Whatever her thoughts on the actions of these men, she seemed only slightly interested in what they were doing. Of course, in this part of town, slightly interested in the wrong sorts of things could see you slightly dead. The object in question squirmed at the sound of her voice and the tension in the plaza rose another notch. 

"It is none of your concern, missy," ground out the smaller man. "It's ours, and you'd do well enough if you left right now." A thrashing from the ground disagreed with his claim.

"I'll go," she said, making no move to do so. "I just want to see what's giving two men such as you a difficult time to move. I'd hate to think it was anything more then a large dog." The renewed squirms seemed to be trying to convince her that the captured creature wasn't just an animal. 

Both men had shifted their attention to her, and the thrashings in the bag managed to find the hole at the top of the sack. Knives' eyes caught the glimpse of small, pale fingers, and from the slight stiffening of her spine, Kiley had seen it as well. A kidnapping, then, or slavers. Knives sighed and looked to his right, finding a convenient stretch of wall from which to watch the festivities that were sure to ensue.

The men looked at his new position oddly, but their attention was recaptured by Kiley, who slowly began to move towards them. 

"It looks to me like you have a child in that bag," she said softly. 

"It's none of your business if we do," the smaller one asserted, but both wasted no time in drawing weapons. Two pistols were trained on her before she managed ten steps. Most of the plaza still lay between them as she paused.

"If you do not leave now, we will kill you," cautioned the larger man. Kiley looked at both of them, and something about her expression caused both of the men to blanch. Knives craned his head about but couldn't see what unnerved them so.

Kiley laughed, a cold sound that sent another smile to his lips. "If you don't let that child go, I will have to make you." She took another step forward, and the smaller man shot a glance at Knives.

"Don't look at him," she chided coldly. "He's not your problem. I am." Her hand strayed to her hip, the gun there seeming to rise up to meet her palm. "And it seems you have a rather large problem here." She was concentrating on the smaller man. He seemed squirrelly, twitchy. His eyes rolled between his friend, the bag, and the woman advancing on him, unsure of what to do. Despite his friend's bold words, he obviously wasn't comfortable with the thought of shooting without more provocation. His hand twitched on the gun, his finger still safely resting on the trigger guard as Kiley held his eyes and slowly paced ever closer.

Then the larger man fired.

Kiley could feel the bullet whiz past her right ear but didn't flinch. The report echoed through the streets but no one shouted or came to look. His friend shot him a startled glance, but fear held him frozen in the same position. She met the eyes of the larger man squarely, her gaze sliding into that fearsome stare that she had developed during her misspent youth. His eyes widened in shock, and she realized her error. She flinched ostentatiously, cringing to her left and breaking eye contact. Her pride kept getting in the way of allowing herself to be underestimated. Considering that being underestimated was one of her best defenses, she needed to work on acting helpless. Obviously, she recovered well enough, as the man relaxed, but she berated herself for making the mistake in the first place. 

"That's all the warning that a pretty girl like you is going to get," he called out. "Leave now, if you know what's good for you." He aimed at her head again and waited for her to leave.

She quit playing around and looked him in the eye again. "Pretty? Just for that I'll let you live. If you run now, you won't get hurt." The larger man didn't even take the time to think over her generous offer. As she stepped forward again he fired. At that signal, she threw herself into motion, avoiding the shot and each successive bullet he sent her way. He shot again four times, then had to reload. His friend stayed still, unable to make himself pull the trigger.

"Sam, for the love of-- Shoot her!" called out the larger man while he scrambled to reload. He glanced up from what he was doing to see what was stopping his friend. Sam still wasn't moving, his hands frozen on his gun. As he looked, Sam toppled to the ground, stunned. The larger man's eyes sought Kiley, who flashed him a saucy grin as their gazes met. She was standing near where she was when he had started to shoot at her. Her hands were resting lightly on her hips, and her lips were parted just a trifle as she breathed a little faster.

"Sam got a little tired," she said facetiously. The man gauged the distance between them and her unhurt state and his eyes grew wider. "I hit you," he stammered out. "What the hell--?"

Kiley's grin grew larger. "You missed," she said simply. "Your friend is just as slow as you are; watch!" With that as warning, she threw herself forward. His eyes could hardly follow her motion as she bounced forward from where she was standing. His fingers closed the chamber on his pistol, but she was as his side before he could raise it.

Her hands gripped his, forcefully holding the muzzle towards the ground. "Guns are dangerous toys," she whispered into his ear, "But never forget: the danger lies in the hand of the one who holds it. You are nothing compared to me."

"Who are you?" he asked. He managed to keep his body from shaking, but his voice betrayed him with a small tremble.

He felt her lips smile against his ear.

"I'm just a ghost," she whispered as she sent him into unconsciousness. 

She didn't slow his tumble to the street; she was too busy trying to pry open the top of the sack. The cord had been knotted several times, and her fingers fumbled with the ties. She didn't want to stay here any longer then necessary. With the gunfire stopped, someone would be wandering by soon just to see what was going on, and she wanted to be gone by then. 

She pulled the knife from her boot and sliced the ties, throwing open the sack. The head of a little girl emerged into the afternoon light, her eyes squinting against the glare after the dimness of her captivity. Her eyes focused on Kiley's and for a disorienting moment she felt disassociated from the world around her. She blinked hard twice and found herself with a bunch of child filling her arms. 

Kiley looked down on her as she franticly tried to figure out what to do. The child looked to be only five or six years old, and she was skinny as a stick. Whoever had been taking care of her had not been feeding her enough; she could feel ribs under the thin shirt. Pale blonde hair fell over the child's face, obscuring most of it but Kiley could make out a pert little nose and rosebud mouth.

Her lips tightened as she took in the beauty of the child and her likely fate. She gathered her in her arms and turned back to Knives.

"What do you plan to do with that?" he asked, not liking the serious expression in her eyes. "She's too small to eat, and too young to be of much use."

The child looked up at the last comment, fear evident in her large blue eyes, but Kiley's hand on her head calmed her somewhat. 

"Oh, Knives," she said with false cheer. "She followed me home. Can I keep her? I promise to walk her and feed her and love her and I'll do it all myself," she said sprightly as she strode past him, towards the brighter areas of the city.

"A child is not a pet," he said, exasperated as he followed. "You are not the sort of person who takes care of children."

"Well, I'm not leaving her here. I don't think those men had anything good for her in mind." Her false cheer had evaporated as her mind grappled with the task before her.

"So what are you going to do with her now?" he persisted.

"Oh, bugger off. Give me a few minutes; I'll figure something out. Right now, she needs a bath, food, and some clothes that fit. That's enough for today, and I'll figure out what to do tomorrow later."

They proceeded to move away, but not unnoticed. A pair of eyes that had been following Sam and his friend watched them walk away before scrambling back to their master with the latest news.

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Kiley tried to put the child down, but she refused to leave her arms. Her little arms clutched at her neck and held on like her life depended on it. Kiley saw the pained expression on her face and didn't force the issue. She wasn't heavy enough to tire her, and if she received some comfort, well, she didn't seem to have had much in the way of comfort lately. It didn't harm her to hold the child, and she needed the human contact.

A slow rage burned in her. That someone would do something so horrible to a child was anathema. Children were to be protected and kept safe, not tortured and twisted and destroyed. When young, one is subject to the whims of the adults that surround you. A child has little say in what happens in its life. As an adult, she had the responsibility to assure that the child could live to grow up, to have a happy life, and to be safe from harm. She had rather personal feelings on the subject, having come from an unhappy home and childhood herself. Seeing other children abused was the fastest way to raise her anger.

A small part of her was suspicious of the coincidence. It was almost as if Knives had led her to the trouble she had found, but one glance at his seething countenance convinced her that this wasn't his fault. He was obviously not happy that she seemed to have acquired a dependent. She almost wasted a moment wondering what he would have done, but felt a pang of sadness as she realized that he would have left her to whatever those men had planned.

She couldn't imagine being unmoved by the suffering of a child, especially one as young as this. Innocence was something she prized above all else, having seen so little of it in her life that she realized it for the precious treasure it was. She wished she could save this child from the horrors that life had in store, but she was intelligent enough to know that such a thing is never possible. She could just do her best to save her from the worst, and hope that she could do enough.

Knives was right about one thing, though, as much as it pained her to have to admit that he could be right. She could not afford the luxury of taking care of this child. Now that she had saved her from the obvious threat, she had to figure out what to do with her. She didn't know where to leave her, that she would be taken care of and not relegated to the same fate. She looked around the city, and in the faces of the people around her. Could she trust anyone here? Dammit, she never trusted anybody. How was she supposed to know who she could leave the kid with?

She was beginning to gather a few curious stares, so she quit peering intently into the faces of people around her. It wasn't helping, anyway. Absently, she found a store that sold secondhand children's clothing. She ducked in and lost Knives for a moment. He looked even less happy when he entered the store a minute later, but stayed silent. She counted that a blessing and sorted through the clothes, looking for something to fit the child that wasn't completely threadbare. It took a bit of searching, but she found some shirts and a couple pairs of pants that were neither too large not too small, and were reasonably priced. She paid for them without haggling over the price, and took her into the dressing room to change out of the soiled things she was wearing.

The girl's eyes lit up with gratitude, and she wasted no time wriggling into the new clothes. As soon as that task was done, she latched on to Kiley again, unwilling to let go once more. Kiley smiled and ran her hand through her hair, grimacing at the tangles she found.

"You need a little more care then you've been given," she whispered into her hair. The child nodded seriously, then looked up at her with big blue eyes.

"Oh, no," laughed Kiley. "I'm no one's mommy. I'm afraid I would quite mess up the job."

The eyes didn't waver.

"Look, kid, I'm glad I could help out, and I promise I'll leave you in a good spot."

The eyes showed a hint of disbelief.

"No, I'm not quite sure where that is yet. But I'll find a place, I promise."

The eyes pleaded.

"Ok, stop that. One, I have absolutely no experience with kids. Two, remember that man out there? He'll kill you quick as looking at you. I'm dangerous to be around, and I'd have to be a complete idiot to bring a child into that sort of danger."

Her expression changed to an adoring one.

"No. No puppy eyes. I won't have it."

They twinkled. 

"You can't come with me, I'm sorry."

They drooped.

"Enough," she laughed. "Let's find someplace to get clean."

The child patted her stomach.

"Food will taste better when you're clean."

She looked doubtful.

"I promise; you'll see." Kiley picked her up and left the dressing room. Her old clothes were dumped in a trash bin, and they collected a very bored Knives and left the store. Kiley continued to lead until she found a nice hotel, one unlikely to ask questions of a young couple and their child. Knives took the lead without being asked, and secured a room with two beds. Upon reaching their room, he immediately took over the bathroom, leaving Kiley to unpack and secure the bed farthest from the window. She managed to pry herself from the grasp of the child, then sat down on the bed. 

The girl crawled on the bed until she could fold herself into Kiley's lap. Sighing, Kiley held her again, waiting for the bathroom to be unoccupied. 

"So, kid," she started, then paused. The girl looked up at her questioningly, and Kiley sighed. "You need a name. I can't just keep calling you kid now, can I?"

The child smiled and shrugged.

"Come on. I know you can talk. Just tell me your name," she cajoled. 

The girl shook her head, still smiling. 

"You're going to make me guess?" 

A nod. 

"Fine. I'm not playing that game," she said sternly. "You can either tell me or not, it's up to you."

The child sighed, then pulled a playing card out of her pocket. 

"Where in the world did you get that?" Kiley asked. 

The girl shrugged and pointed at the card, the ace of hearts.

"Red?" guessed Kiley, rolling her eyes.

The girl giggled, then pointed at the letter in the corner.

"A? Ace?"

She clapped her hands, a gleeful smile crossing her face.

"Who the heck would name a child after a card?" Kiley asked rhetorically, then shrugged. It was the same person who would sell a child into slavery, and if she ever found them, they would pay.

Kiley waited a half hour before growing impatient. Ace had left her lap after about fifteen minutes, and had amused herself by crawling under the beds and picking up dust bunnies. She had looked upon the time as an exercise in patience, something she knew she badly needed. She tried to ignore the crawly feeling of the dried sweat that coated her. She tried to not think about how nice a hot shower would be, relaxing the muscles that were still protesting the speed she had forced from them when she attacked the men. She tried to ignore her itchy scalp and how nice it would be to wash her hair. She tried to ignore the gaping hole in her middle that her stomach had turned into. She did her best to pretend that she was clean, refreshed and happy and full, but gave it up for a lost cause when the girl climbed into her lap again, eyes pleading for food.

Patience is an overrated virtue, anyway.

Kiley shifted Ace to the bed, then got up and pounded on the bathroom door.

"Knives, stop hogging the room. We're dirty and hungry, and it's our turn now!"

There was no answer.

"Knives? You need to share the room. It's our turn now," she cajoled through the door.

No answer.

"Knives?" Worry crept into her tone. "I'm awaiting your sarcastic response, and if I don't get some sort of answer in the next five seconds, I'm breaking the door down," she threatened.

Still no answer. 

She shrugged, and began to count. "One. Two. Three. Four. . ."

The door was torn open, and an irate and wet Knives stood on the other side. "What?" he demanded irritably.

Kiley didn't respond. She was too busy enjoying the view. Her eyes drifted down from his face, past the glistening expanse of chest and lovely shoulders, down past the trim and firm waist, all the way to the floor and back up until she met his eyes again.

She wasn't sure if he was blushing or ready to explode, but whatever reason for the flush, with that pale skin of his, you could see it all over his body.

"Nice view, bathroom hog," she said with a smile. "And since you're finally out of the tub, you might as well towel off and give me and the kid a chance to get clean before dinner.

The door was slammed in her face. She put one ear against it, listening for the sounds of someone entering the bathtub again. She heard water running down a drain instead and backed away, a silly smile on her face.

Ace looked at her quizzically as she unpacked her last change of clean clothes. Kiley stuck her tongue out at her and whispered, "You'll understand when you're older," then her smile broke into a huge grin.

That man's body was an art form all it's own. Yummy.

She quickly schooled her face to seriousness as Knives came out of the bathroom. He strode quickly to the bed and flung himself down on it, carefully not looking at her.

Blush, definitely, she thought, unable to stop a wicked grin.

"Don't dawdle in there," he commanded, face in his pillow. "I'm hungry, and not inclined to wait long."

"I hear and obey," Kiley said mockingly, picking up Ace and heading off to get clean. 

She and the child stripped quickly and got in the shower. Kiley wasted no time shedding much of the grime that had accumulated in the past couple weeks, then knelt and scrubbed Ace. Her actions were equally quick and harsh to begin with, but they slowed as she realized much of the dirt she was trying to wash away were actually the faded remains of bruises. She carefully dabbed away what dirt she could after that, and the ground-in grime she treated with much more care. 

"Someone must not have liked you very much," she said to the child's taut back. Kiley was glad that she couldn't see her face, glad to be saved from having to see her cry. Or even worse, not seeing her cry, having to see a child her age already come to expect that pain is normal. 

"Don't worry," she said cheerfully. "I like you, and whoever gets you next is going to like you as well. I promise."

It didn't have the effect she wanted. The girl merely sighed, her shoulders slumping. 

"It's ok," Kiley said as she moved to clean her legs. "Not everyone in this world is evil. Someone will see you and love you. We just have to find them."

The girl twisted her head and looked down at Kiley.

"Yes, I love you. But I told you, my life is too dangerous to bring you along. Look me up in ten years and we'll have a great time, but I like you too much to drag you into the hell I live in. You need to have some time around people who don't live in harm's way before you spend a lot of time with me."

The child shook her head no. 

"I am not taking a child with me. That's final. You'll just end up being another one of Knives' victims if he thinks he can manipulate me through you."

Ace turned her head away, and Kiley finished washing her without further incident. They both dressed and exited the bathroom without another word being said.

"Ok, Knives. Let's go eat," ordered Kiley.

"Finally," he said. "Women always take forever in the bathroom," he said as he pushed past them to the door. 

Kiley looked at the clock and saw that twenty minutes had passes and suppressed a sigh. She began to feel the familiar sense of exasperation that accompanied all her dealings with Knives, but then she remembered the lovely view and smiled a wicked little smile. It's hard to be mad at a guy with such obvious willingness to show off his charms.

Kiley picked up Ace as Knives locked the door to their room. The hotel they were in did not have an attached restaurant, but there was a diner up the road a half a block. The décor of the diner was slightly old and grimy, and it seemed familiar to Kiley. It was one of those places with booths by the windows and stools in a row by the counter. The color of the tabletops was a sad pale green, and the floors and walls were varying shades of a equally depressing yellow. A quick glance noted a few patched holes in the walls and more chips and stains on the countertop then she could count. It felt like any number of diners she had entered back in her own world, and she could feel a part of her relaxing that she hadn't even noticed was tense.

And if it felt like home, it smelled like heaven. The place might look a little dingy, but it smelled like the people in the kitchen knew what they were doing. A waitress met them at the door and gave them a couple menus and a piece of paper for the kid to color on, then led them to a booth near the back. They settled in, Ace near the window and Kiley by her side, Knives sitting by himself, taking up the entire bench. He buried his head in the menu as quickly as possible. Kiley took another moment to look around this wonderful place before opening her own. She didn't lose herself in contemplation, though. It was much more fun to look at Knives. She couldn't see much of him; he hid well behind the laminated paper. She amused herself by looking at his hands, hands that were gripping more tightly then the weight they held required.

She tired to keep from smiling, she truly did, but the memory of that blush was just too pleasing. She honestly couldn't remember the last time she had seen a man blush, and was sure she had never seen one blush just because someone was appreciating his. . . charms. And such nice charms they were, too. She caught herself smiling and forced a solemn expression on her face, then returned to reading the menu.

Oh, they even had pasta here. Wonderful. Lasagna, oh, she hadn't had a good lasagna in years. When the waitress came by, she ordered lasagna and a glass of wine for herself and spaghetti with milk for Ace. Knives ordered a roast beef sandwich and a glass of water, then turned to stare out the window.

Kiley stared at him, enjoying the fact that she was making him uncomfortable. 

"Must you?" he asked irritably after a few minutes.

"Must I what?" she asked, unable to keep the humor from her voice.

"Stop staring at me. You act like you've not seen a naked man before," he said petulantly.

"I've seen plenty of nekkid guys," she drawled, "but none of them have blushed like you did. You act like you've never been naked in front of a woman before."

A tell-tale flush crept up his neck. She laughed softly.

"I see. Don't worry; you measure up."

He turned a freshly angry gaze on her. "Did I ask for your opinion?"

"It's your own fault," she said, deflecting the question. "I didn't make you answer the door without anything on."

His gaze grew colder. "You threatened to break down the door. You would have seen me regardless."

Kiley wasn't ready to assume the blame. "Knives, there is this wonderful thing known as a towel. Most people at least grab one before opening the door."

He wasn't mollified, but the food arrived, saving them both from the conversation. Kiley dug into her meal with gusto, but slowed when she saw how quickly the girl was eating. She was glad she had ordered pasta, which had the virtue of not needing much chewing. Otherwise, she would have been worried that the girl would choke. She had been expecting to finish some part of the kid's meal, but actually ended up sharing part of her lasagna. 

"Wow, you were hungry," she remarked as Knives looked on nonplussed. Ace looked up plaintively, begging for more food. Kiley laughed and ordered a dessert, claiming only a couple bites of the ice cream sundae before passing it over. 

"She seems to have accepted you easily," Knives commented as they played. Kiley was poking at her ticklish sides as the child tried to feed her face. The only real result was giggling and grins, but at Knives' comment, both quit the game and grew serious. Ace busied herself with eating the remains of the hot fudge, and Kiley stared into his eyes, willing him to grow uncomfortable again and look away.

He didn't comply. Finally, Kiley spoke, answering the question he hadn't quite asked. "I don't know why she's so willing to trust me, but I'm not the sort of person who betrays a trust once it's given. Maybe she senses that."

"I don't trust you," he said flatly, still looking her in the eye. 

"You say that like it has anything to do with me and nothing to do with you. Trust is always given; I have no control over the people who trust me. I don't trust you, either, if that makes you feel better."

"But you trust her," he said, shifting his gaze to look at the girl.

"Yeah, I think I do."

"Why?"

"Because. . . I'm not sure. Because she needs me, maybe, and because I don't think she would ever betray me. But mostly because I think she's a good kid who needs to be protected. And because even I need to trust someone, sometimes, and the suspicious part of me has decided that she's safe. But, mostly, I trust her because I do, and because she hasn't given me a reason not to trust her."

She saw a shadow move across his face and guessed at its source. "The first thing you did when you saw me is knock me out and lock me up. Not exactly trust building."

"And you suddenly appeared in my ship and then proceeded to knock me out and lock me up."

"Hey, I had a little more provocation," she reminded while rubbing her shoulder. "But, yeah, not the greatest of beginnings, I'll admit."

The waitress brought the bill and Kiley paid it, tipping generously and gathering up a sleepy Ace. Knives preceded them into the hotel, and not much more was said as they got ready for sleep.

Kiley took everything out of her bag, then grabbed a heaping armful of clothes and blanket and headed for a laundry. Knives dumped a load of his clothes on top then turned to his bed. 

"Fine," she called after him, "but you have to watch the kid while I'm gone."

He sighed, and she took that for agreement. "I'll be back in a bit; seeing as she's sleeping, she shouldn't be too much trouble." She fumbled the door open and kicked it closed, then narrowly avoided being run down by a hyper child. She seemed to be using the halls as some sort of track, and Kiley had to jump out of the way twice more before she reached the elevators. 

"Why children and sugar don't mix," she remarked to herself as she glimpsed the girl dashing past again as the doors closed. She sighed and shifted her grip on her burden, trying not to lose a sock that was beginning to slide. 

It was nice to be alone, or at least as alone as one can get in a city of teeming however many there were here. Maybe it was just nice to be away from Knives, and the constant danger he represented. Ticking time bomb of death? Quite.

She felt a momentary pang of conscience, leaving the child in his care. But she was sleeping, and not likely to cause any trouble that Knives would kill her for. Of course, he wasn't acting like his normal irritating self, either, which troubled her a little. Being in the city certainly had him on edge, a little jumpier then he had been in the desert. She hoped that nothing would happen in her absence, but someone needed to wash these clothes, and since Knives was bloody hopeless when it came to chores it was her bailiwick.

She found the laundry without much trouble. She started washing the clothes and settled back to wait for them to finish. She looked around the room, desperate for something to do, but she could find nothing but a phone book.

Curious, she looked up random things. Pizza. Her heart gave wing to glad prayers of thankfulness to see that there was pizza on this world. And lots of places that delivered. . . she pondered ordering some now, but decided to wait for breakfast. She looked up pet shops, thinking about picking up a puppy before they left, but there weren't any. She wondered what sort of planet this was, that it didn't have any pets. She looked up breeders as well, but there weren't any advertised. Well that sucked.

Then something caught her eye. The word December was repeated frequently in the names of many businesses. She closed the book and scanned the cover, and it was there as well.

December. Why did that seem familiar? It wasn't one of the blown up cities, she knew that much. Those were July and some other one, August, maybe. She leafed through pages again, hoping something would catch her eye and spark the memory she was seeking. She didn't need to go far. Bernadelli Insurance. This was where the insurance girls came from. December, the largest city on the planet. 

Why would Knives bring her here, of all places? There were plenty of other towns he could have chosen; they were only looking for food, after all. He hated cities, hated the people and hated their dependence on plants, and he brought her here? Why?

She sat and brooded for a while, looking for an answer and not coming up with anything plausible. She was sure he had a reason; he did nothing without a reason. But why here?

As she puzzled over this question, her mind finally supplied the answer to her first question. December was familiar because the priest came from here. He had an orphanage 100 miles, or iles, or whatever, outside December. 

An orphanage. She wondered if it was still around, and leafed through the phone book. After much flipping back and forth, she finally found something promising. Thompson Orphanage, located outside December.

Millie.

Kiley suppressed a smile. Millie would be the perfect solution. She bid farewell to the worry over what she was going to do with the kid and began to look for a way to convince Knives to let her leave her there.

********************************************************************************

Knives looked at the sleeping child and sighed. Something about this child bothered him, but he had nothing more then a feeling to work from. He sat on the edge of his bed and watched her.

"I don't trust you," he said softly.

The girl opened her eyes and watched him warily.

"You will bring trouble," he commented.

She nodded, then sighed.

"You can talk."

She nodded, then whispered, "Yes."

"But you don't."

She shook her head.

"Why?"

She sat up, pulled up her shirt and pointed at the bruises that covered her torso. She caught his eyes, made sure he understood her, then covered them again. She pushed herself down again and closed her eyes, obviously finished with the conversation.

"Why?" he asked again.

She shrugged, her back to him. The slim shoulders barely moved her shirt. 

"You know," he persisted. "Why did they do this to you?"

"Because they could," she whispered, then ignored him. 

He didn't wish to add to her collection of bruises and so didn't try to force the answers from her, but the enigma of her presence bothered him. That woman had taken to the child so quickly. The child herself brought problems with her, and Knives was not so naïve as to believe that she had been saved from whatever trouble besieged her. The girl was still braced for trouble, and he was inclined to believe that she knew more then she was letting on about the situation she had been taken from.

Briefly he thought about returning to his ship and letting the humans get in as much trouble as they pleased without him. He shook that thought away. It would be much more interesting to stick around and see how that woman got out of the trouble she had borrowed. Or he could watch her die, and that would be another sort of amusement.

********************************************************************************

Kiley returned to a dark room. Knives was on his bed, back to the door, and she couldn't tell if he was sleeping or not. Ace was curled in a ball on the side of the bed closest the door and farthest from Knives. She couldn't blame her. Sleeping this close to him was going to be disconcerting at best. The room grew dark as she closed the door behind her but she kept the lights off for the sleepers. Besides, the room was not so large she would lose her way as she sought out her bed.

She dumped the clothes in a pile on the floor and dug out something comfortable enough to sleep in. She quickly stripped and pulled on the freshly washed clothes, reveling in the fresh from the dryer feel. She slipped between the sheets and snuggled close to Ace, who relaxed with a sigh as she wrapped her arms around her.

Kiley wished for a moment that someone would do the same for her. She could almost imagine the feel of strong arms holding her close, protecting her, keeping her safe. She closed her eyes and reveled in the dream of safety, of someone else picking up the burden of security and leaving her a chance to be free of tension and care, even if only for a moment. Pretending that there was someone who cared enough for her life t risk their own on her behalf, imagining that someone would succor her when she needed rest, her dream was simple.

The sound of Knives turning over broke her out of her reverie. No one had ever held her tight and saved her from the dark, and no one ever would. Sometimes she wished that what remained of her heart would die. It would making living an unloved life so much easier. No one had ever really cared if she lived, and the list of people who wanted to see her dead was too long and depressing to get into at night. Of course, most of them had seen their wish come true, but their malice seemed to have traveled to this new world within her heart. How was she supposed to love anyone when she had never known love? She knew respect, and fear, and awe, but no one had even looked on her with tenderness, not a single day in her life.

No, she spent her entire life being strong enough to take whatever came her way, strong enough to face the worst the world had to offer on her own. That she still owned her soul was proof enough that she could be strong enough to face the world and survive, but there is a great distance between surviving life and enjoying it. She had made it through many difficult times on her own, and had few doubts that she could continue to do so no matter what came her way, but she wished that she could find someone to share the burden of life's trials. It would be nice to not have to prove over and over again that she could live through anything. Well, metaphorically speaking, she reminded herself as she pulled the blankets closer.

Then Ace sighed in her arms and snuggled closer. Kiley couldn't suppress a smile as her heart reminded her that it did know tenderness. She felt such warmth of feeling for this child in her arms that she could hardly believe it originated in her own heart. She could hardly remember who she was this morning, before she met and saved the child. Some of the ice in her soul had been melted by the big blue eyes and the love she saw there, and what emerged from the melt both excited and frightened her. She could love, and could be loved. So simple a concept, yet so wonderful.

She wanted to question the love, but didn't dare, more then half afraid that if she did what she felt would disappear like morning fog. It was too new, still too special to bear much scrutiny. It shouldn't be there; by all rights the child should be as afraid of her as she was of the men who had been carting her around like so much luggage. She had done nothing that should be met with anything more then gratitude at best, and had she been in the child's place she would not have trusted her heart to another so easily. But impossible, improbable, or just unlikely, it was there, she could see it with her eyes and with her heart. 

Someone loved her. That fact was more precious to her then anything else she had ever possessed. She had been alternately used and ignored by almost everyone in her life, but never loved. Her mother had conceived her to trap a father who had never even acknowledged her existence. Her childhood had been one of pain and torment unending, her young adulthood one of misery, pain, and the attempt to lose herself. And then she had tried to atone for sins unforgivable, a fruitless task, and a thankless one. Death, finally, and a new chance at life.

And someone actually loved her here, beyond all reason and beyond all hope, someone actually loved her.

*******************************************************************************

Knives could not sleep, but tossed and turned as minutes slowly drifted by. He hated cities, hated all the vermin that populated them, and he hated this city the most. He imagined he could feel them, all of them, their little thoughts and their little lives fluttering at the edge of his mind like bats, seeking to suck him dry. All the vermin who strolled the streets, secure in their petty lives, sucking the blood from the plants, not caring about where their power came from so long as it was there when they needed it, and damn the cost to his people. Being here, he could not push the memories of the horrors he had seen away from his thoughts. They played over and over again in the back of his mind, reminding him why he fought to kill the vermin, and urging him to return to his slaughter immediately.

He could not relax enough to find slumber, his emotions jumbled between a need for rest and a need to kill. He wanted to go out into the streets and start lightening the burden on the plants, but knew that he would not be able to make an impact that would help before he was taken out by their sheer numbers. Plants reproduced at a much slower rate then the fecund humans. The demands of the humans and all their offspring were beginning to outpace what energy the plants could provide already, and were draining his people to death at an even faster rate.

That was the crux of the problem, as it always had been. There were too many of the humans and not enough of the plants. Even if his brother would help him instead of hindering his steps at every turn, it would be a dicey thing to get rid of them all. His best chance to wipe the plague from the universe had been when he crashed the ships, and that woman had screwed that up. Vash might have been crushed by her death, but dying in the ship was easy compared to what he would have done to her, had he been able to get his hands on her. 

The flare of anger that accompanied that thought guttered out under the weight of his depression. He tried to keep a tight rein on his temper, but it was a hard thing. At least that woman seemed to sense that it wasn't the right time to annoy him, or maybe it was just that she was absorbed in taking care of that brat, but whatever was keeping her from intentionally annoying him was appreciated.

His face flushed as he remembered the look on her face as she took in his lack of covering. What right had she to look upon him in that way? It was wrong of her to look at him like he was. . . like he was. . . like she had, dammit! It was just wrong!

He shifted position again, uncomfortable in both body and mind. He hated that his discomfort so obviously amused her. He had felt her eyes on him all throughout dinner, and the distraction had made his stomach churn. The incident was making it hard for him to concentrate on the reason he had brought her here in the first place. 

He didn't believe her story of coming from another world, not completely. He wanted to gauge her reactions, to see how familiar she was with this place, and to give her a chance to try to contact her people. Watching her, he knew that she had never been in this city before; there was too much of the tourist to her actions and none of it was feigned. That at least helped confirm her story, but there were many places on this planet she could be from. Not being familiar with December, while a point in her favor, was not enough to prove her veracity.

Then she decided to go play the hero and events began to slip through his fingers. He had allowed it for a chance to see her in action, and he had to admit, even grudgingly, for a human she was impressive. He had gauged her physical skills and found them remarkable, but that did not necessarily mean that she would be any good in combat. She had accurately assessed the situation and neutralized the threats expediently, wasting neither time or motion. He was pleased to see that she was skilled in fighting, but his pleasure quickly soured. But the child and everything that came after was not in his plans, and he found himself unable to cope with the addition. 

Thankfully, the woman didn't seem set on keeping the child around. While the girl might work as a lever against her good behavior, she had grown oddly protective of the child, and he did not wish to provoke the woman while she was so unpredictable. The easiest course of action was still for him to learn from her, and until her actions forced him to end her life, he would try to keep her happy enough to continue her teaching.

He opened his eyes and realized that he was facing the humans. With a grimace of distaste, he flipped over. He hated to admit it, even to himself, and even in the safety of the depths of the night, but there was something about this human that interested him more then it ought. He should not have been embarrassed to have been seen by her, but he was. He didn't like what that said about him. 

A human. How could he not hate her? The weak part inside of him tried to convince him that this human was different. If her story was true, she was not one of the ones who had lived their entire lives sucking down the blood of the plants. He quashed that thought quickly. She was a vermin, and would act like they all did. For all she was a most intriguing vermin, and not quite like the rest, she was a heart a human, and she would react like a human. It would do him no good to think of her as anything different.

The morning dawned bright and clear, but its advent caused little stir in the room. Knives and Ace slept through it, and Kiley had already been up for an hour, folding clothes and stealing a little time in the bathroom. The bathtub especially had called her name, and she felt little guilt over using it while the other two slept. She could feel the dirt falling out of her pores as she soaked in the near-boiling water. Lazily, she contemplated how she was going to convince Knives to let her take the child to Millie's orphanage. She didn't have the feeling that he was friends with any of his brother's traveling companions.

Her mind mulled over her problems lazily as she luxuriated in the heat. She hoped that leaving the child with Millie really was the best solution. Based on what she knew of her it was a great idea, but she easily admitted that she might not know Mille as well as she thought she did. For all she knew a little about this world, she had never tried to memorize the facts of what she had seen, and what she did remember was buried under a haze of memory. There were most likely depths the woman that she had never seen, just as there were facets of Knives that she was continually discovering, like this discomfort he was showing in the city. It had never occurred to her that he might not like going to a conclave of humans until she saw him here, barreling single-mindedly through the streets so he wouldn't have to think of where he was. Oddly, finding out that he could feel fear was oddly endearing, and actually heartening. It was also a little cute, but she'd die before she let that slip.

Not that his dislike of cities a great weakness, or was something that would help her when he decided to kill her. She would not be able to hide here and be safe; he would just be a little more pissed at the lengths to which she drove him when he finally caught up with her. She was an urban girl, felt safest in cities and knew how to use them and fight in them, but this wasn't a planet at war. Or at least, it wasn't a planet that knew it was at war, Knives' crusade notwithstanding. She could get in a fight here and the noncombatants wouldn't know enough to get out of the way. Wistfully she wished for less complacent populace, but recalling the ready smiles and laughter she had seen, she smiled ruefully. Her people didn't smile much; it was hard to be happy when you knew you could die when you rode the bus, or stepped into the mall, or just walked down the street. Random violence took victims almost daily, and while it couldn't and didn't quash the spirits of the citizens, it did make them more sober then these people who had never know impersonal violence. 

She shook her head and sat up to wash her feet. Yes, it was nice to be in a world with less senseless slaughter, but enjoying the fact did nothing to help her solve today's problem. She needed a place to stow the kid. It needed to be a place that wouldn't mistreat her, would keep her safe, and that she could convince Knives to let her visit to leave the girl. Thompson's Orphanage seemed to fit the first two criteria perfectly. It was far enough from the city to hopefully be beyond the reach of those two men and whatever cronies they might come across. And while it was quite unlikely that they would bestir themselves far enough to find the child in the first place, it didn't hurt to be careful. She knew that Millie knew how to defend herself, and that she would defend others. And it wasn't like they time that the journey there and back was of any importance. They had no schedule to keep, no timetable to adhere to. If she could just come up with enough credible arguments, she might be able to fill that third criterion as well.

Suddenly she snorted. She didn't need Knives' permission to do anything. He didn't control her, or own her, and wasn't going to make her do anything against her will. Defiance flickered, but it was followed by a sense of caution. She might not need his permission, but going against him was dangerous, and she would do well to remember that. If she managed to annoy him he would most likely try to kill the girl. Taking out the source of the disagreement might serve him well, but her stomach turned at the thought of losing Ace. She hadn't finally found someone who dared to love her to wager with her life. 

Soberly, she gauged her chances against Knives, if it came to a fight. She still knew a great many more tricks then he did, and that would help, but he was faster and smarter then she was, giving her not much of an edge. Being the defender automatically put her at a disadvantage; it is easier to destroy then create. She had much practice defending against all odds, against all comers, against the world itself. She had a well-deserved reputation as a hero, or at least she had possessed one before her past caught up with her. Impossible tasks she had accomplished with ease and style. But she had always had her team to back her up, and her team was very far away now.

Biting her lip, she assessed her changes, and found them slim. She wished that she could see Knives in action, to better know what he was capable of. Instantly, she regretted the impulse. Knives would leave bodies behind him, and she didn't want to see that. 

Sighing, she hoped that it wouldn't come to a fight, but there was a feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that belied her optimism.

Kiley stayed in the tub until she heard someone stirring in the room. She quickly scrambled, toweling off and dressing. She ran her fingers over her short hair, fluffing it perfunctorily. She opened the door and met a surprised and still sleepy Knives. His hand was raised to knock, and his face was twisted into an expression of distaste. 

"Sorry to keep you waiting," she chirped as she moved forward. He backed out of her way and she slipped past him. He closed the door firmly behind him and she suppressed a giggle. It was so much fun, depriving him of something to sulk over. She found a place that delivered pizza twenty-four hours a day, and ordered breakfast. Half an hour later, food was at the door, Ace was still asleep, and Knives was still in the bathroom. Two minutes later, pizza was in the room, Ace was in her lap, and Knives was looking with distaste at the onions on his slice.

"Why onions?" he asked as Kiley took it from his hand and shoved it in her mouth. 

"Why not," she mumbled around her bite. He shuddered and grabbed a piece of pepperoni instead.

Ace was doing a very good job of smearing grease over every available inch of skin, but she seemed to be enjoying the pizza as well. After the feeding frenzy eased, Kiley picked up Ace and claimed the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, they emerged to a room empty of pizza and a smug Knives. Kiley didn't want to give him the satisfaction of a reaction, but she rolled her eyes as Ace after turning her back to him. Ace giggled, giving her away. She smiled and demanded a display of feet.

Hmm. The shoes seemed a little small. No worries, though. They would fit long enough to get her to the orphanage, and after that. . . it wasn't going to be her problem. Her mind shied away from the thought of not being responsible for Ace, but her mind knew it was for the best. Knives was too dangerous. He might look innocent, what with bed hair and pizza breath, but under that morning exterior lay the heart of a stone cold bastard.

She just wished that she didn't need to keep reminding herself of that. Seeing him pull on his socks, he looked like a normal sort of guy, and there really hadn't been much in his behavior that she could point to and say that he was incredibly dangerous. But then, she might just be selectively editing her memory again. She rubbed at her eyes and tried to chase away such dangerous thoughts. 

She just wanted to keep Ace so badly that she was trying to convince herself that Knives wouldn't hurt her. Surely that was it. She gave the child a hug before standing up. She stretched, loosening the last kinks out of her muscles before picking up her pack. Ace jumped off the bed and stood beside her. Knives finished tying his shoes and followed them out the door.

They narrowly missed colliding with a girl running through the halls. Kiley looked after her, astonished. It was the same child. She wondered if she had been dashing about all night, or if she had taken some time to sleep. Shaking her head, she walked to the elevator. The girl ran past twice as they waited, and each time Knives grew a little more visibly upset. When the girl came by a third time, he grabbed her by the neck and slammed her up against the wall. 

Kiley and Ace both stared at him, eyes open wide. Kiley opened her mouth to say something, but closed it when she couldn't find the words. The child's cheeks were flushed but the rest of her face had lost all color in the heat of his glare. 

"It is ill-mannered and rude to run in the halls of a hotel," he informed her politely, his calm voice at odds with his face. "One might think that someone would have taken you in hand before this, but since you are obviously in need of training. . ."

He was interrupted by a shriek of terror.

"Risa," called out an older woman who was running down the hall as fast as she could. "Oh, God, baby, what's happening?"

She threw herself at Knives, clawing and dragging at his arm, trying to make him let go.

"No, no, my baby, you, let go of her, evil, no, she's not hurting anyone, stop, you're hurting her. . ." The woman babbled while clawing at his arm, desperately trying to save her daughter.

Knives merely shifted his icy gaze to the mother, unperturbed. The elevator doors opened behind Kiley and Ace, and they gratefully took the chance to escape.

They waited in the lobby for almost ten minutes before Knives joined them. He sported a few obvious scratches and was holding his shoulder like it pained him. Kiley gave him a quizzical look but Knives ignored her and walked out the door. Having already checked out, she shrugged and followed.

"It's not a good idea to get between a mother and her child," she advised as they walked down the street. It was still early in the morning and traffic was light, but Knives' pace was quick as he moved forward. He continued to ignore Kiley. She stopped on the sidewalk and said quietly, "It's not a good idea, even if that child is adopted."

He paused and looked back over his shoulder. "Is this your idea of a subtle warning?" he asked archly.

"No, it's not subtle at all. I'm taking Ace to Millie's orphanage. You can come with me, if you like, or you can stay here and I'll meet back up with you in about a week. There won't be any other options."

Knives walked back to her. "Do you want to start a fight here?" he inquired quietly.

"You don't," she said with assurance. "This isn't something you want to push me on. It's not as important to you as it is to me, so it's not in your best interest to make an issue of it."

They stared at each other for a minute. Finally, Knives nodded.

"We're going the wrong way to reach the orphanage," he allowed. 


	12. Late night thoughts

I doan own Trigun.

I took a nap last night that turned into just plain ol' sleeping. Sorry!

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The young man sat anxiously in a antechamber, waiting for his audience. He looked about the walls, hung with generic art prints and painted a non-descript beige. He perched on the edge of his seat, a slightly padded chair identical to all the others that lined the walls. The room had been decorated specifically to be forgettable, and succeeded admirably at its task. He tried to contain his impatience but his tapping toes and fidgeting fingers gave him away to any who might have seen him. Luckily for him, though, the room was empty. Action had always been his strong suit, not patience. He fiddled with the tie at his neck, feeling out of sorts dressed in a suit. 

A knock sounded at the door and his head swiveled in time to watch it open. An man of perhaps fifty years stood framed by the opening and beckoned him into the office beyond. He looked like someone's grandfather, paternal in a slightly distant way. His suit was expensive and well tailored, hiding any hint of a paunch. The younger man wasted no time before following him into the room. He ran his hands through his hair as he entered, trying to bleed off some of the nervous tension that consumed him. The older man smiled slightly, but soon grew serious. This was not a matter to be taken lightly. 

"You say you've found them?" asked the older man as they settled at his desk.

"Yes. We finally saw them as they headed away from the hotel. They stayed there only last night, and outside of giving us the names of Frank, Joan, and Katharine Franklin, the hotel was quite unhelpful. We are unsure if those name are aliases, but we suspect that they are. The child appeared to be unharmed. She was following the woman quite closely, as if she was enamored of her, and the woman appeared to be watching out for her. The child had on new clothes and looked to have been treated well, cleaned up and such."

"Does it look like they know what she is?" he prompted.

"No, sir. Or at least, if they do know, they do not care. She is being treated like any other child would be, or at least that's what our observation shows."

"Hmm. It's unlikely that they don't know. From the sound of what happened yesterday, the woman could have been seriously injured trying to rescue her. Why would they go through the trouble of rescuing her, if they don't know she's a plant?"

"I don't know, sir," the younger man said respectfully. "There are those rumors of plants mixing with humans," he offered.

The older man didn't bother suppressing a shudder. "Horrible thought. Possible, though. Yesterday, did any of their actions belie. . . superhuman capabilities?" he queried.

"Josh isn't sure. For one thing, he says only the woman fought. The man just stood around and watched. He says that her speed seemed to be more then what would be humanly possible, but she was visibly tired at the end of the attacks, and a plant wouldn't be. Her reactions to what went on around her were equally near or slightly above expected human limits, but not enough to guarantee a positive ID, one way or the other."

"And the man did nothing? That's odd. Normally it is the man who protects and the woman who sits and does nothing helpful. One would think that he would at least help her."

"Josh says that he did nothing but hold up a wall, if I may quote. He says that the man only watched the woman intently, as if her were gauging her abilities, much in the same way he himself was."

"So you're saying that they might not even be a team."

"Yes, sir. They might have banded together only recently, or not even be working together now at all, but only traveling together."

"This is a set of complications we don't need."

"I know, sir. If word got out that plants can pass as humans. . ." began the young man.

"No," interrupted the elder. "I see no problem getting the girl back, or killing her, if necessary. You know that they are not impossible to kill." The younger man nodded as he continued. "Without proof, it doesn't matter who knows about the plants. What we don't need are more players in this game, especially ones we cannot identify. Have we any word back on the descriptions?"

"Nothing, sir. We have found no one that matches either of their descriptions on the list of players and potential players in this game."

"She is much to skilled for no one to have noticed her, seen her train, something."

The younger man shrugged. "We have nothing. She may come from one of the smaller towns, in the city for a lark. There are some of those farm girls that get pretty strong."

"Farmgirls do not take down two armed men with speed and skill. That takes training, and I would have sworn that we had everyone marked."

The younger man shrugged again, no answer forthcoming. The elder one looked at him for a moment, then sighed.

"Go. Take a squad and bring that child back, or kill her if your opposition appears too formidable." He didn't ask if the squad was ready, and didn't need to.

The younger man rose and bowed, a fist over his heart. "We will bring the child back," he promised, looking the man in the eye. Then he turned and strode purposefully from the room, not looking back. He passed through the empty waiting room and into an equally featureless hall. He went quickly to a locker room. The three men inside eyed him as he walked in the door. He loosened his tie and gave them a nod as he moved to a locker. 

"We are to bring her back," he said as he began changing. The other three made noises of agreement and checked over their weapons one last time as they prepared to leave.

*******************************************************************************

"So, you know where Millie's orphanage is?" questioned Kiley as they walked down another random street. She could sense no pattern to the directions they were taking, and wondered if following Knives was really the world's best idea. He turned and they faced the desert. They walked out onto the sands. He was quiet for a long while, long enough that Kiley wondered if he was going to say anything at all, but he finally responded.

"Of course I do. Do you think I wouldn't keep tabs on the annoying friends of my brother's?" Disgust laced the word friends.

"I would have thought you would prefer to forget that they even existed," she said while shrugging. 

"I prefer knowing as much about my enemies as possible," he said slowly, enunciating each word carefully so she couldn't misunderstand him.

"Hmm, and they are your enemies how?" 

"They are human," he said, as if that was such an obvious reason that she should not even have asked the question. 

"There are lots of humans," she pointed out facetiously.

"Yes, but these two know about my brother and I. That makes them potentially a danger."

She shrugged, and since she was following him and he was unlikely to have seen it asked, "I don't see that it makes then much of a danger. They seem to like your brother. Makes them rather unlikely to try to harm him, don't you think?"

"Today they like him. But what if that woman of his gets in another argument with him, and starts telling people, out of spite? It's a risk."

"And you hate risk. I get it. So Meryl's a risk. What about Millie? She seems harmless."

"Until her hatred of me for that priest's death overcomes her friendship with my brother."

"I don't see that happening." 

Knives sniffed, but made no reply. They walked on, moving farther and farther into the desert. Minutes passed until they neared an hour. Kiley had mused over his obvious discomfort, trying to figure out what his problem was now.

"You know what, Knives? You worry too much. Do you really think that anyone would betray your brother? I mean, he makes friends as naturally as breathing and all of them stick up for him, even against horrendous odds, and even against you. And the only people who know of you, know of you through your brother. They can't betray you without betraying him, and they would never do that." 

He didn't respond, but she could read the tension in his shoulders. "No," she said thoughtfully, drawing the word out as her thoughts congealed from an clouded mass of feelings. "You aren't afraid of people betraying your brother. You expect that people are going to betray you, and will hurt your brother in the process. Wow, whole world revolves around you, huh?"

"Shut up," he said whirling around and facing her. The raw rage in his face made her take a step backwards, instinctively seeking more space. "You sit and prattle like you know me, like you know anything about me. I am tired of listening to you babble like you have any idea what you are talking about. If you wish to live, shut the hell up!"

Kiley swallowed and nodded, shaken by his obvious rage. She realized that she had hit a sore point and was willing to let the matter rest, for now. 

Knives spun on his heel and walked off quickly. She picked Ace up and followed, breaking into a jog for a few paces to catch up.

"I'm sorry," she started quietly. "I have no right to pretend that I know anything about you, or about what you've been through. I can't say I really know much about betrayal, or at least, not like you do. I'll drop the subject, for now."

Suddenly she was flung backwards. Dazed, she found herself on her butt ten feet from where she remembered being with no memory of how she got there, but a quick flaring of pain on her right side clued her in. Her eyes grew round as she looked up at Knives, then regained their normal size as she checked to make sure the girl was alright. Luckily, she hadn't landed on her, and she seemed to be unhurt. Her eyes were filled with tears, though as she looked between them uncomprehendingly. 

Kiley looked up at Knives, allowing her face to show none of the anger she felt.

"You will not say anything on this, again," he emphasized. "You may not be bothered by pain, but I promise you, you will feel a lot of it before I allow you to die."

She disregarded his advice. "Get off your damn high horse!" she shouted at him. "Not everything in this world is done with the express purpose of pissing you off, or hurting you, or trying to cause you pain. I realize that this is hard for you to understand, but you really aren't all that important. People do not plan their lives around inconveniencing you or doing things to hurt you. If crap happens to you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's not planned or done with malice. It's just life; life sucks and crappy things happen, and that's just the way it is."

"You say it like you mean it," he sneered.

"Damn straight. But guess what, this crap is meant to hurt," she said as she launched herself at him.

She knocked him down at the knees and grabbed a handful of his hair. She rubbed his face in the sand, making sure to get some up his nose, then jumped back before he could recover from the temporary disorientation. She was mad, but didn't actually want to hurt him, but just piss him off a bit like he had annoyed her. She shifted her weight for her next attack, but paused as she felt something out of place.

Knives recovered and turned to continue the fight, but stopped as he saw her. She was kneeling in the sand, one palm out and her head cocked to one side, listening. 

"Oh, shit," was all she had time to say before they were set upon by four strange men.

Kiley watched them run for a moment, gauging the time she had before she needed to react. Figuring that she had nearly one minute, she looked about for a spot that might be a tad more defensive then the middle of the road. The best spot was a sand dune that almost succeeded in masquerading as a hill. The problem with it was that it was a bit off the side of the road and towards the onrushing men. She didn't know if they would be able to reach it in time for it to do them any good, but she had to try.

She grabbed a bewildered Ace and her pack and started a flat out sprint to the hill. Knives didn't waste much time following her. She wondered if he know what this was all about, if these people were after him for some reason, but didn't waste the breath to find out. Whoever they were and for what arcane reasons they might be here, they weren't friendly, and that was all she really needed to know right now.

Leaving the road turned out to be more of a blessing them she had figured on. She and Knives had been walking through untreated sand for weeks, and were used to the effort moving through it entailed, but the men following were obviously not. Their steps slowed a fraction as they floundered, and Kiley blessed every second they gained. Running up the slopes of the dune took more out of her then she would have liked, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that it would hinder her pursuers more.

A shot winged by her, puffing harmlessly in the sand to her left. An extra surge of adrenaline propelled her to the top. She flung herself on the sand, curling around Ace to soften the blow. She rolled off her and almost into Knives as she pulled her gun and aimed at the men who had almost reached the base of the dune. She pulled off a shot, knocking the gun out of the hand of the foremost runner. He almost fell in his haste to stop, and held up a hand to slow his companions.

"We won't be easy to catch," she called down, watching them warily. The other men came no closer, but did begin to circle the dune. 

"We only want the girl," called out the one who had lost his gun. He was holding his hand close to his body, but showed no other signs of pain.

Kiley shot a look at Ace. The child was visibly terrified. White showed all around her pupils and her skin was entirely pale. Kiley smiled in reassurance.

"She doesn't seem to want to go with you," she called down. "I'm inclined to follow her wishes in this matter and not yours." She bit her lip as she viewed the other men circling her position.

"Is that girl worth dying for?" asked the man.

"You can ask yourself that same question," she called down. "I'm not giving her up to you while I live, and I promise you, I'm not easy to kill."

He didn't respond with words, but he and his friends began to move closer to the dune. Kiley shot the ground in front of them, quickly enough that the report from the gunfire sounded like one long shot, and they paused.

"I don't want to kill you," she promised. "Don't force me."

The men said nothing, but a great deal of arm-waving and hand-signaling ensued. Kiley sighed, and turned to Knives.

"You could help, you know," she said waspishly as she maneuvered Ace between their bodies.

"They only want the child; what is she to me?" he asked. She glared at him. "You seem to be doing fine on your own."

"Help is always appreciated," she said as she fished in her pack for more ammunition. Her fingers closed around a box and she reloaded, leaving the open container at her side. She kept a wary eye on the men, waiting tensely for their next move. 

She didn't have to wait long. The men ceased their waving about, but none of the three she could see were moving. She flipped herself over and drew a bead on the shoulder of the man charging at them. He managed to get a shot off before she could squeeze the trigger, but it hit the sand by her face and did no more harm then showering her with stinging sand.

She felt something wrong as the bullet left the gun, a slight pulling away from her intended target. Instead of hitting the man in the shoulder, the bullet found his heart. Her heart sank as she realized just what she had done, but she was too well trained to lose precious time to shock. Motion to her left teased her eye and she rolled to fire. 

This time the gun worked, and the man was hit in the knee. Incapacitated, he hit the sand and rolled down the hill to lie in an unmoving heap. She then spun to her right and tried to shoot the man who was almost halfway up the hill. She pulled the trigger, but the gun was jammed. A scream of frustration was torn from her soul as she flipped the gun so her hand was on the barrel. Ignoring the searing pain of the heated metal against her flesh, she flipped it towards the enemy and was rewarded by seeing him fall as it hit him in the forehead.

She turned again and barely missed being skewered by a knife in the hand of the leader. She grabbed his arm as he passed her by and tried to loosen his grip. Treacherous footing caused him to slip and fall, and her grip on his arm wrenched her down after him. They tumbled down the hill together, still fighting even while being tossed about. Upon arriving at the bottom of the hill the hilt of the knife was in her hand, and the blade was in his leg.

"Shall we talk?" she asked.

His pain-glazed eyes didn't give her the answer she desired.

The man glared defiance and hatred. Kiley was perched with one knee on his chest, one hand stretched to his thigh and the other holding him down at his throat. The arm on his throat shook with suppressed rage, but she tried to calm herself, tried to force herself to deal with the present situation and not her anger with Knives. Tearing her mind back to the present, she noticed that the man was uncommonly silent. Most men would be weeping with pain now, but he stayed silent and stoic. The stoic types amused her with their stubborn insistence that keeping quiet would make anything better. Then again, she was one of the stoic types, so maybe she shouldn't judge.

Kiley shook her head, but kept her eyes locked onto his.

"It would be easier if you speak, no?" she said softly. "This knife, see, is in your leg, as I'm sure you've noticed. I know it's hurting you; you know precisely how much pain it causes. But looking at the blood seeping from the wound, I seemed to have missed the artery. I'm sure if I dug around here a bit, I could find it. How does bleeding your life out here on the sand sound?"

He said nothing, his expression unchanging.

She tried another tactic. "I just recently finished a very exhaustive bit of schooling in the most effective forms of torture. I could try a few of them on you." Her left hand trailed down from his neck and twisted a spot on his shoulder. He couldn't stop a cry of pain, but he quickly broke it off and continued to glare at her.

"Or, I could just kill you now and go ask one of your men," she continued. "You may think that you are too tough to break, but I shot out the knee of one of your friends; there's a lot of pain there. He should be easy enough to coerce. Or perhaps your fellow I knocked out; with a head injury it should be easy to make him talk. Anyway, I should finally get some practice with these torture forms I've learned. It would be interesting to see if they actually work."

He glared at her with undiminished hatred, and she sighed. She awkwardly pulled a knife from her boot. It's a great place to carry one, but difficult to get to while kneeling on someone. She fumbled with it until she felt sure of her grip, then brought it out before her body and made to slice his throat.

"Fine, woman. I will talk, if you promise to leave my men alone," he grated out through clenched teeth. She successfully bit back a smile. Few good leaders will allow their men to come to harm in their place. Of course, it could be just that he knew his men would break, but she found herself willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was that stoic thing, or maybe the rage in his brown eyes just made him too cute to resist. Or maybe she was just getting soft in her old age. Death can change a person.

"If you tell me what I want to hear, I will have no reason to harm them," she promised, lifting a little weight off his chest to make it easier for him to breathe. "My questions are simple enough. Why do you want the girl?"

"Why are you so determined to protect her?" he countered.

She moved closer with the knife. "I don't see that you're in much of a position to be asking questions," she said with a smile that held only passing resemblance to one of humor.

"She is dangerous," he said solemnly, as if this was an acceptable answer. Did he truly think that she would let him take Ace after three little words?

"Dangerous?" she repeated, scorn lacing the word. "How is a five year old so dangerous that four men are sent to bring her back? Four great big men oozing dangerous, to be precise. You know, maybe you would fare better if you didn't let all that danger ooze out your pores," she said facetiously.

"You don't know what she is," he told her, and Kiley began to get a bad feeling. Surely, fate was not so unkind.

"That is the point of this little exercise," she informed him. "You're supposed to be telling me why she is so important to you."

"You aren't going to believe me," he told her.

"Well, why don't you try me," she coaxed. "If I don't believe you, I'll let you know."

"Fine, woman. That little girl you are so anxious to protect isn't even human." Nope, fate hated her. Boy, was Knives just going to love this. At that thought her blood ran cold. Knives, allowed to mold another plant in the image he desired? The planet would not survive. Years of practice kept her shock from her face, but nothing could ease the cold sweat that prickled the back of her neck.

Kiley allowed herself to look taken aback, and then amused. "Not human? What is she supposed to be then, some sort of robot? I have seen the bruises on her; she's quite alive."

"She's a plant," he gasped out, as she had been idly twisting the knife in his leg as a form of encouragement.

"A plant," she repeated flatly. "Impossible. Plants aren't alive. They're just machines," she said, hoping that this was the accepted common knowledge. His look of distaste told her that she had guessed a little wrong. 

"Do they still teach that out in the boonies?" he asked. "No plants are living creatures, mindless, soulless automatons who can mimic humans to a point. I'm sure you think she likes you." Her face must have betrayed something he was looking for, and she truly hoped so, because she was trying to look a little shocked. "She may seem to show affection, but it's a sham, playacting. Plants can't feel emotions."

"You lie," she said, her voice not shaking but betraying a slight quiver. He said nothing more, and she was tired of playacting and torture.

Abruptly she stood up, leaving the knife in his leg. "Take your men and go."

He looked up and her incredulously. "What do you mean?"

"I swore that I would protect that child. I will not go back on my word."

"You swore? To whom?"

"To myself." She wiped the sand off her hands.

"She isn't human," he whispered urgently. "She won't even remain a child for another two years. They grow at the speed of a year a month. You'll see, she isn't human. I can't leave her with you."

"And where would you and your broken friends take her, if she is such a danger?"

"We are not alone; we know how to take care of her kind. You can't hope to handle her on your own, and that man of yours doesn't seem to be much help."

She snorted. "That man isn't mine, and I think I can take care of a child. I took care of you well enough, didn't I?"

"You have no clue what these monsters are capable of. You can't possibly even hope to control her."

"Well, looks like you folks thought you could control her, and I managed against you well enough. Thank you for your concern, but I'll take my chances. You can take your men and go back to your truck, and back to your city and back to your friends and you can tell them that this isn't their problem anymore." She turned to walk back up the hill.

"You can't! It's too much for you!" he called after her, panic in his voice.

She turned at let some of the assassin show through. "I have only met one thing that was too much for me to handle, and it was not a young girl. It will not be her, you, your friends, your cause, or whatever fantasies you concoct to try to coerce my acceptance of your desires. If I say I can handle her, I will, and nothing in this world will stop me. Now go, and take your friends while I am still inclined to spare your lives."

She turned so he could not see the pain on her face, but she could not keep it all from her voice. "I am sorry that one of your men died. I would not have killed him. Had I known that someone had been messing with my ammunition I would not have used my gun." With that she walked away from him and back to a new pile of troubles.

What was she going to do about Knives?

She walked past Knives and to the man she had shot in the heart. She wasn't hoping, precisely, that he might still be alive, but some not small part of her really wanted to see some small shred of life.

All of her was disappointed. The man's eyes stared sightlessly into the full glare of the suns, and his limbs lay sprawled in a unruly manner that life could not mimic. The sand beneath him was stained by his blood and tacky with the drying moisture of it. Kiley knelt by him, a little uphill, and placed her hand on his neck, ostensibly feeling for a pulse. She sent her mind into his body and gauged the damage to his heart, and the amount of decay to his mind. 

There was the most outside of chances that she could bring him back to life. She could heal the damage to his heart and chest and make it beat. The sticking point would be if his mind were still intact enough to return, or if oxygen deprivation would have her reviving a vegetable. He was nearing the border of no return and the time when she could not help was almost upon her. 

Sighing, she knelt there as her mind weighed the consequences of her possible actions. While she might be able to help him, she could not answer the questions that his miraculous return to heath would raise. These men were looking for plants; they would not believe her story that she was just a genetically altered human from another dimension, and she could not blame them. It was rather farfetched. She knew that they were going to pursue her and Ace until they either recaptured her or gave up trying. If they thought she was a plant as well, and with some as yet undiscovered powers they would never give up or give them a moment of peace. 

She could predict their next move already. The men would return to their base, or headquarters, or whatever staging area they came from, and they would give a report to someone else. That someone else might be powerful enough to make a decision as to the next course of action, or he might have to relay today's information to his boss, but whoever learned of what she did this morning, they would think over her, her actions, her place in the world, and what she might possibly want with a plant. His twisty mind would examine the problem from every possible angle, shadowing her actions with his agendas until he could explain her.

She knew how that sort of person thought. He would not let then get far, but they would have a day or three before the next squad was sent out, time she could use to try to get her and Ace to disappear. 

If she looked to be a plant, they would be lucky to gain a span of hours before the next squad came out after them. A human's motivations would need to be examined; a plant is just a danger. They would be beset by wave after wave of soldiers ready to die for their fight against a terrible evil, and she would have to either kill them all or face another fun bout of capture and torture.

Besides, she thought as she tired to convince her conscience that leaving the man was the right course of action, he knew the risks. He trained with weapons and had made himself one, by the look of his body. A man conditioned to violence accepts that he might die at the end of a violent act. Acceptance of this is what allows one to charge a shallow hill in the face of a gun, allows a man to try to distract the enemy so his friends can win. Maybe he underestimated her; people on this planet had a tendency towards subtle sexual discrimination. He must have thought that he had a chance. 

She wasn't proud to have killed him; whatever part of her that gloried in taking a life had gutted out and died a very log time ago. She accepted that his death at her hands was something that she would have to live with, and that her total of lives taken had crept up another notch. She accepted that she wasn't going to save him, that the time in which she could have done so had slipped away while she convinced herself that she shouldn't. She lifted her hand from his neck and brushed away a traitor tear that threatened to fall.

She didn't cry.

She stood and walked to the unconscious man. She grabbed him by the collar and slapped him on the face a couple times, the action a cover for her slipping under his skin and easing the swelling on his brain. She brought him carefully back to consciousness. Her angry eyes met his as they fluttered open. A groan passed his lips and she slapped him one more time to help wake him up.

"Take your friends back to your truck and go home," she ordered coldly.

He looked at her, still disoriented, then lunged, his hands going for her neck. She stepped back and allowed him to fall, then pounced on his back. With a hand tangled in his hair, she whispered in his ear. "Your friends are all either dead or crippled. I'm allowing you to live, as long as you leave now." She forced him to see where his leader lay in the sand. He was tying off a bandage around his thigh but was obviously in no condition to fight. "Your other friend is worse; he has no knee," she informed him, letting his head fall into the sand once more.

His shoulders shuddered, and he sighed.

"You win," he told her. "Today, you win."

She stepped off him and back out of an easy lunge's reach. "I win today, and I'll win tomorrow and the day after that. Keep that in mind as you decide to come after me and mine again. I will defend to the death and that death will not necessarily be mine."

He nodded distractedly, and she knew that her words had no impact on him. But he would report them, and maybe they would have an impact on the person he told.

Unlikely, it's true, but she could hope.

She picked up her gun from where it lay in the sand and walked back to the top of the hill.

"You should have killed them all. I would have," said Knives, offering helpful advice from the sidelines.

"Probably," was her response. "But since I did the fighting, their lives were in my hands, and not yours. They do not know how lucky they were," she said distractedly as she dug in her bag for the cleaning kit. She opened the weapon and saw that it was only jammed, and that fixing would be easy.

"What did they want?" he asked. "That first one seemed chatty."

"None of your damn business," she said as she began to clean her gun.

She worked on her gun while waiting for the men to collect themselves and leave. She was the very picture of unconcern as they shot looks loaded with hatred her way, and even hazarded a small wave to their retreating backs as the last two hobbled away. She finished fixing the jam and continued to clean the gun. Since the weapon was already broken down and she had a few minutes on her hands, then was as good a time as any. 

She continued to ignore Knives while she mended some of the problem he had caused, and while he pretended nonchalance, she could tell that her silence was bothering him. Ace, on the other hand, seemed entirely unconcerned over the whole incident, although Kiley watched some tension leave her shoulders as the men finally left. Kiley put her hand on Ace's knee and gave a small, encouraging squeeze. She was rewarded with only a tiny smile, but it did reach her eyes as well as her face, and Kiley's heart was happy. 

When the men had left and a plume of dust announced the beginning of their trip back to December, Kiley turned to Knives and calmly said, "You do understand that I am extremely annoyed with you."

He turned to her with a look of bored superiority. "Your annoyance does not bother me, human."

She bit back a sigh. "Why did you think that tampering with my ammo might possibly be a good idea? What was going on in that blonde little head of yours?"

He shrugged, his gaze moving from her eyes to look across the sands. "I wanted to see what you would do, if your weapon didn't work."

"And you didn't care if someone might die? If I might die?" She answered her own question. "No, you wouldn't care about that. You were just _curious_, weren't you? You just wanted to know more of what I was capable of. You wanted to see some more tricks, and you don't care who dies or who gets hurt as long as you get what you want."

He turned his gaze to her again, and she saw the emptiness in his eyes. 

"One of these days you are going to have to pay the price for your curiosity, instead of always foisting the cost off onto others. That habit of yours is getting to be a pet peeve of mine."

He again didn't respond, but she knew what he was thinking. Her feelings were of no consequence to him.

"No, his death isn't why I'm annoyed." she said softly.

"Then why are you?" he asked. "I was sure it was his death that bothered you."

She laughed, a quick humorless bark. "No, senseless death isn't what annoys me. It saddens me. What annoys me is, thanks to you, I now have enemies. My favorite thing about this planet was that I finally wasn't anyone's enemy."

"You are my enemy," he pointed out. 

"No," she denied, shaking her head. "I might be your opponent, but there isn't that needed level of enmity that makes an enemy. Those men, however? I just killed their friend, and for one of them, their kin. The ones alive now hate me, and it would make them happy to see me dead. That makes them my enemies, and that annoys me."

"I would be happy to see you dead," he said.

"Would you? Not quite, not now, I'm thinking. You still want things from me, which means you want me alive. Maybe later we'll be enemies, but right now we're just antagonists."

She fell silent. Her foot pushed at her pack absently and it slid down the hill a few feet. She picked up Ace and propped her on one hip, then stepped down to get it. As soon as she was six feet from Knives she turned and shot him in the right thigh.

He looked down at the wound and back up at her, uncomprehending, pain chiseled on his features, rage burning in his eyes. She backed away a few more paces, then leaned over to pick up her pack. He tried to leap at her, but wasn't able to reach her before his leg crumbled beneath him.

She looked at the wound dispassionately. "Hmm. That's the second time today I've missed the femoral artery. I must be slipping."

"Why?" Knives asked through teeth clenched tight with pain. Little beads of sweat appeared on his brow as he clutched the wound. His entire body was tensed with the pain of it.

"Why?" she repeated, mockingly. "Why? Because you are a threat." At his lack of comprehension she explained. "I was willing to travel with you while you were only a danger. It would be a little hypocritical of me to discriminate against just being dangerous, but as soon as you became a threat, both to my welfare and to that of this child, I am no longer willing to put up with what you bring along with you. I'll be going now, and it would be better for you if you didn't try to follow."

His eyes narrowed. "Human, you will not get away with this. You have no idea what you are dealing with." He tried to keep his voice clear, but the hurt crept in.

She smiled at him, a sly little smile that held only humor at his expense. "No, Knives, you don't know what you're dealing with. You think I am just a human with a few little tricks. I'm a Genalt, a genetically modified being who is more then capable of dealing with a barely trained excuse for a being like you. It amused me to let you think that I was powerless. It amused me to play the weakling, to let you continue to feel superior, as if your birth gave you some right to do whatever you pleased with the lives of everyone you meet.

"Everyone has the right to do with their lives as they will. Maybe you'll learn this now and leave me and Ace alone to pursue our own destinies. Maybe you'll need me to teach this lesson to you a few more times before you finally get it, and I don't have much problem with that. As I said, you have annoyed me; teaching you a lesson causes me no pain."

With that, she shifted Ace to a piggyback position and took off towards the road at a lope. Behind her she left an apoplectic Knives beating his hands on the sand. His blood slowly leaked out onto the thirsty ground, and he gave off trying to threaten her and allowed the tears of pain and rage to join the salty red liquid.

She was going to pay for this, and pay dear.

********************************************************************************

Kiley loped down the road for about an hour, moving away from Knives as quickly as she could. Ace had bounced on her back for a couple minutes before falling into the rhythm of her movement, at which point they moved together like one body. It was easy to fall into a trance brought on by the physical nature of running, but Kiley's mind was too full of worries to be lulled.

What was she going to do about Knives? She had slowed him down, but if she wanted to get him out of her life she should have shot to kill. She had wounded his pride as much as his body, and he wasn't likely to let either slight go punished. She figured she had a couple days before he recovered enough to be coming after her again, and this time she wasn't likely to turn his wrath with the promise of teaching. He would be out for blood this time, to replace what she had shed. Likely, he would just try to shoot her on sight, or worse, Ace, just to cause her pain.

And for that matter, what was she going to do about Ace? She knew nothing about the proper way to raise a child. She knew it was important to teach this child well; Knives and Vash had changed the course of human history before they were two. While this girl didn't have quite the same possibilities for mayhem that had been presented to the boys, it was undeniable that she shared their power. Somehow, someone had failed to instill in Knives a sense of responsibility for the consequences of his actions, a sense of fairness, a sense that strength gives responsibility and not the chance to do whatever one pleases. The result was easy to determine, and painful to see.

Then there was Vash. What had Rem done to screw up that boy so badly that he felt that every being was worthy of protection but him? The man spends over a hundred years roaming the face of the planet saving lives and doing the best he can, and for what? To do it again the next day, and the next? He spent his entire life trying to atone for his brother's crimes. While she appreciated his sense of responsibility, that was not the sort of life she wished Ace to have. There had to be some course available that would let her live a happy life, one where she was responsible for her actions, but only hers. Saving others was all well and good, but it should not be done at the expense of your own happiness.

Kiley smiled wryly to herself. Like she was one to talk. She had spent a significant portion of her life doing just that. But in her defense, she didn't deserve happiness. Evil people like her could only hope to atone for their actions, never move past them. Her deeds weighed on her like an albatross on her neck, and she had needed every chance to try to balance the scales of her life. One impossible mission for every life taken; that was what it took. Using that reckoning, she had worked off over half of the lives she had stolen before their time before she died. While here she had managed to balance the ledger even further, but now it looked like the bad side was beginning to creep up again.

She shook her head and tried to get her mind back on track. How was she supposed to raise a child? She was a killer, that was all. She might try to deny the fact, but it was her essential nature. When confronted with a problem, her first inclination is always just to eliminate it. Stopping her inclination towards senseless slaughter was a daily task, made barely easier by the passing of time. Just look at what she did back there; maybe she allowed three of the men to leave, but even more tellingly, she let one man die because it was easier.

She sickened herself, but had long since learned to live with her failures as a human being. The point was, how could she raise another life and even hold a prayer of that life turning out well? The answer was, she couldn't.

Her pace slackened and she slung Ace to the ground. Going to one knee, she waited a moment for her breath to still. Ace stood nervously by her, and Kiley spared a moment to wonder what she was thinking.

"The man back there said you're a plant," she started.

Ace stared into her eyes, neither affirming or denying. 

Kiley smiled. "I'll take your lack of a response to be agreement. I don't care what breed of person you are; you should know that. I like you, whatever you are. But being a plant does raise a few problems we need to work through. You do know that Knives is a plant as well, right?" 

She gave a cautious nod. 

"I had a feeling you did. That quiet act of your hides great depths, doesn't it? What I need to know is who you want to be with. I won't be putting up with Knives in the state he is now, and I'll not be telling him your secret if you don't want me to. It's your secret, not that it's one we can keep from him for long; he's going to notice you're growing faster then a human, and appearances aside, he's not stupid. He's just crazy. But what I need to know now is who you want to grow up with. I'll take you back to him and move on, if that's what you'd like.

"And if you do prefer Knives, I won't mind. He is your kind, after all, and I know how much of a bond that creates. He doesn't like you now, but I promise that will change after he learns what you are. I'm not a plant, but I do love you. The choice is up to you."

Ace leaned in close and gave her a rib-bending hug. 

"You," she whispered in Kiley's ear. Kiley laughed with unfeigned glee, and returned the hug.

"You don't know how happy that makes me," she informed her. "I would give you up if that's what you wanted, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it one bit." Her heart eased, she moved on to the next question.

"I guess leaving you behind while I roam across the sands isn't such a good idea now," she started. "You were born in trouble, and I sticking with me isn't going to drag you into more of it. Do you mind, though, if we swing by Millie's place first? I definitely need some pointers on how to raise a child, and she seems to be my best bet to ask."

Ace considered the matter solemnly, then nodded.

"Good, then that's where we're off to now. On the back with you!" she said, and hoisted the girl into the air. She giggled as she flew, and snuggled close as they began to move down the road again. Kiley's heart was eased on one count, and she tried to ignore her other problems for the moment, savoring the thought of being preferred.

********************************************************************************

Roger was cleaning up after himself when he heard a soft knock on the door. He was curious as to who it might be; he rarely got visitors way out here near the middle of nowhere. He wasn't expecting anyone and his family wasn't due back home for another week. He walked over the door, wiping a few stray specks of sand from his hands with an old hand towel snagged from the back of a chair. Maybe it was a neighbor come to keep him company while he was alone.

His curiosity deepened when he opened it. On his front porch stood a slightly sweaty woman in her early twenties and a very small child who looked to be her daughter. He had never seen either of them before.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely. 

The woman looked at him with a sheepish grin, and he fought the urge to smile in return. She was a pretty lady when her face was solemn, but the shy smile made her beautiful. "We seem to be a little lost," she explained. "We're looking for the Thompson Orphanage, and I'm afraid that my directions were a bit vague."

"They would have to be, for you to end up here," he said, surprised. "The orphanage is some fifteen isles away. You'll need to go back to the road and continue on another ten iles or so until you reach the hills. About an ile in, there will be a spur road on your left. You'll need to follow that for another five iles, maybe a little less, and then take the path on the right. It's rather protected, nestled in those hills as it is, but it's not to hard to find if you know the way." His hands spoke along with his mouth, gesturing this way and that, fingers tracing the curves of the road.

"Thank you," she said. "I was merely pointed in this direction and informed that it was around 100 iles outside December. You have been very helpful." She hesitated, her face growing serious. "I'd ask another favor, if I may."

"You can always ask," he told her. She seemed ready to leave now that she had directions, and he wasn't ready to let her go. "You can come in and ask, if you like. It will get you out of the heat, at least, and I can provide some refreshment."

She hesitated, and if he had the fleeting thought that she was assessing if he was a threat of some sort, but it passed when she smiled again and took him up on his offer. He backed out of the doorway to let them pass, and didn't miss the way the woman was careful to keep her body between him and the girl. 

He hid his smile at her caution as he turned to get them both some water. "Find a chair and sit; sorry about the mess. I'm on my own at the moment, and I'm afraid I tend to take up all available space whenever I get the chance.

"You call this a mess?" the woman asked wryly as she glanced around the uncluttered home. Gingerly, she sat in the chair nearest the door, pulling the girl up onto her lap. He brought the water to her and the child and pulled over another chair.

"Ask, and I'll let you know if I can help."

"It's not difficult," she started. "I'm fairly sure that we will be followed. I don't know if it will be in a few days or a week, but it's quite likely that you will be visited by some men who will have a nice story in which I am evil and they are good."

"Such as?" he prompted. 

"My best guess is that they will say I have kidnapped this kid, but they may call me a murderer or a robber or some such."

"Did you kidnap her?"

"Not…exactly. Do you mind?" she asked the child. The girl slid to the ground and lifted her shirt, showing a back that was covered with the fading remains of bruises. "She was like this when I found her. The men who are looking for us are responsible for what you see." She pulled the girl back up into her lap and held her close.

He was horrified that anyone would do that to another living being, let alone a child. "I'll not tell them I saw you," he promised. 

"They may try to bribe you, but I doubt that they will try to force the information out of you. If they do try money…"

"I'll tell them the same again. This isn't my trouble, but I'll help as I can."

"Thank you," she said with a smile. "That's really all I can ask, and is more then I expect. They shouldn't cause you too much of a bother, as they'll have no suspicion that you would have a reason to lie. But if they do resort to trying to harm you, give them the information they want. We don't wish pain to arise out of your kindness."

"What kindness?" he asked. "I've not done anything worth praising. Common decency, that's all. I have two daughters and remember when they were that age. Any man who laid a finger on them would have much to answer for."

She smiled again, but it was a sad smile. "That is kindness, and I've not found common decency to be a common thing."

"Then you've been looking in the wrong places. You're too young to be so jaded. People are better then you seem to think."

"People generally are what I think they are. Sadly, I'm rarely surprised by their actions." She finished her glass of water and stood. "Thank you, but we must be going now. I want to reach the orphanage before it gets dark, and you say it's still almost twenty iles before we get there."

He walked her to the door. "I don't see your thomas," he commented. 

"That's because we don't have one," she said. "Don't worry about us; I'm light on my feet."

He watched, bemused, as she ran off into the desert. What an interesting woman. He wished he knew more about what was going on. She seemed to have things under control, and he hoped that appearances weren't deceiving in this case. It was a sad thing, what had happened to that child, and he hoped that she could keep her out of the grasp of whoever was after them.

Wishing her luck, he went back inside to try to tidy things up a bit before his wife came back.


	13. An explanation

I don't own Trigun.

It's the amazing ten minute chapter! Uh, sorry it's short.

*******************************************************************************

Kiley was incredibly nervous as she walked onto the spur path that lead to the orphanage. What was she going to say, what could she say that was going to make any sense at all? 

Hi, Millie. Ditched the homicidal maniac, thought I'd come say hello?

Hello Ms. Thompson. Do you happen to have any pointers on how to raise a child? 

Hi. My name is Kiley, and I know a lot about you. Do you have any advice for me?

Briefly, she considered turning around and trying to figure things out on her own. Surely raising a child wasn't too hard. Plenty of people had children who didn't grow up to be evil, remorseless masterminds of evil. Too bad she had never known any of them.

She had never planned on having children, never worried about raising them or caring for anyone other then herself. Now, she wanted to do her best for Ace, but knew that the girl needed more then she could give her. No, she would figure out something to say, something to do, something that made any sense at all, because this wasn't about her and her needs. She was doing this for Ace and that meant she couldn't back out.

But she wanted to. 

She turned one last corner, and there it was, a simple complex of tidy buildings. The largest was only four stories, and clustered around it like a mother hen with chicks were five small outbuildings.

Children were playing out in a plaza, screaming and running about and playing games that defied rational description. She stood still and watched them for a minute. Ace climbed down from her back and took her hand. They stood and watched, neither willing to take the next step.

The decision of what to do next was taken from them. One sharp-eyed child saw them standing on the path and gave out a shout. The play in the yard stopped and three adults appeared out of doors as if summoned by magic. The children began to group together towards the rear of the plaza. Two of the adults, a man and a woman started up the path to meet them. 

With a sigh, Kiley started forward. Whatever she was going to do next, she needed to figure it out soon. 

Any minute now.

They met a few feet outside of the grounds of the orphanage. The ground here had leveled out a bit, but even though Kiley was standing on slightly higher ground, she still wasn't quite as tall as either person she met. It was a slightly disconcerting feeling, but also gave her hope. 

"Can we help you?" asked the man in a rich tenor. Tri

"I'm looking for the Thompson orphanage," she replied with a smile.

"You've found it, but I'm afraid we aren't taking any more children at the moment. We already have more then we can afford to take care of, and just can't stretch our funds to take one more." He looked apologetic, but firm. The woman beside him had brightened at her words, but began to pout as the man denied the child.

Seeing this made Kiley a little more uncomfortable. "Um, I didn't come here to drop anyone off. I'm actually looking for a Ms. Millie Thompson." 

The woman spoke. "I'm Millie. How can I help you?"

Kiley wondered what words would work best. "I just have a few questions I need to ask you, that's all."

"Is my sister in some sort of trouble?" asked the man, shifting his weight to the side, ready to protect. "She hasn't left the orphanage in years; she doesn't cause trouble anymore."

Kiley wondered what prompted that comment, but decided that answering the first comment was safest.

"No, she's not the one in trouble. I'm afraid it's me who has a bit of a problem. It's just a few questions, and then I'll be leaving." The two stood there, expectantly, and Kiley muttered, "They're a little private." The two didn't take the hint. "Is there anywhere I can ask you, alone?" she asked, turning to Millie.

"Of course! Follow me," she ordered. A few steps later they entered the grounds proper of the orphanage. 

Kiley looked around as they walked through the courtyard and liked what she saw. Beds of flowers and shrubs lined the base of the main building, and flowerboxes hung from the windows of the smaller houses. The children looked happy and well-cared for, healthy in body and peaceful in mind. Few of the children dared to meet her eye, but they had no problems looking to Millie and the man by her. The looks were filled with adoration and love, and she saw them returned with kindness and affection.

The buildings seemed well constructed and well tended. No loose stones in the walls or less then perfectly hung shingles marred the façade of the main building. Two of the smaller houses had well-tended front porches, complete with swings. The porches had been stained with something that gave them a hint of color, one tinted red and the other slightly blue. The effect was cheery and homey, and looking about Kiley was glad she had cone here, if only because it was good to see that places this friendly and happy could exist on this world. 

They walked to the house with the blue porch and all made to enter the front room.

"I'm sorry to ask this, but could this be a private conversation?" she asked as the man tried to enter.

"I don't…" he started, but was interrupted. 

"Middle Big Brother, I'll be fine," said Millie. 

"She looks dangerous," he insisted.

Millie turned to Kiley. "Are you dangerous?" she asked.

"Yes," she replied solemnly.

Millie turned back to her brother. "See? She is dangerous, so it makes perfect sense that she looks dangerous. Now go; I'll be fine."

"But, she said she's dangerous!" he protested.

"I'll be all right, now, off with you!" Millie hustled her brother out the door and closed it firmly behind him. "My family is very overprotective," she explained simply. She walked to Kiley and stuck out her hand. "I am Millie Thompson."

"AnneMarie Salome Judith deBelville, but you can call me Kiley," she offered, shaking hands. "And the kid is Ace."

"Ace? What a pretty name." She smiled down at the child and tousled her hair. Ace rewarded her with a grin.

They moved to an office at the back of the house. Kiley took the offered chair and settled Ace by her feet. Millie sat behind her desk and steepled her fingers.

"Well, Kiley, what sort of questions do you need to ask me?" 

"It's…complicated," she hedged, looking for words.

"So find an uncomplicated bit and start there," advised Millie brightly.

Kiley sighed and motioned towards the girl at her feet. "Well, I seem to have acquired a child in the past couple days. We both agree that I'm the best person to look after her. But…" she struggled to find words, then Millie helped out.

"You don't know how to raise a child."

"Exactly," she said. Her fingers found Ace's hair and began to make little rows of braids. "That's one part of the problem. There's more though, that makes things very complicated. I saved the child from some people who were carting her about in a sack."

"A sack?" interrupted Millie incredulously.

Kiley nodded. "I don't know how they got their hands on her, but there is another group of men who want to take her and not…treat her well. And then I have a bit of trouble of my own, involving a former companion who would be just as likely to shoot the girl as look at her, if it fit his purposes."

"Your friend doesn't sound like a nice man," prompted Millie as she fell silent.

"No, he isn't. Actually, he's someone you've met before, and he's part of why I came here, and part of why things are so very complicated."

"That's very vague," commented Millie as she began to look for words again.

Kiley leaned over and softly spoke with Ace. "Is it ok if I tell your secret to Millie? If it's not, just let me know." Ace leaned her head against Kiley's cheek and nodded assent. 

"Well, you traveled with Vash the Stampede for awhile, correct?" Kiley started, leading into the problem gradually. At Millie's nod she continued. "And you know that he isn't quite a…normal sort of man." Millie nodded again but said nothing. 

As Kiley began to search for words again, she relented and offered a bit of help. "He's much older then he looks," she said quietly.

"Yes," said Kiley gratefully, latching onto what she offered. "Well, given enough time, Ace will be much older then she looks. And that's why a lot of people want her, including my former companion, if he only knew. I only want to keep her safe and happy."

Millie looked a little confused for a moment, then brightened. "Oh, you're saying she's a plant?" 

Kiley barely had time to nod before someone came through the window.

Kiley spun and turned towards the sound, acting instinctively. Ace was pulled behind her back with one arm and her gun was pulled and aimed by the other without benefit of thought. A veteran of many such moments, where only her reactions decided the difference between life and death, she still nearly missed having Ace torn from her and taken away. 

Time didn't slow as the window burst inwards; it seemed to disappear altogether. Kiley could remember talking with Millie, a loud crash, and then finding herself with the barrel of her gun pressed firmly in Knives' chest as he tried to reach around her. The safety was off, and as time began to move about her again, her lips drew back from her teeth into a rictus that only the blind could call a smile.

"You don't learn quickly," she said conversationally as Knives froze. "I thought I told you not to follow us."

"You implied that it would not be in my best interest to follow you, but I disagreed. I wondered what you were up to, but that you would dare to keep the knowledge of her origin from me? How dare you assume that you have any right to this child? Your hands aren't worthy to touch her," he said calmly, ignoring the pressure at his breastbone.

"Excuse me? How dare I take her from you? What exactly have you done that makes you presume that you have any rights to this girl?" She shoved him backwards a step. "I don't recall seeing you do anything to save her life, or to try to assure her safety, or to even comfort her. Actually, all I seem to remember you doing is sitting on your ass and causing me trouble while I tried to do some good."

He looked at her sadly, like she was an idiot who could not comprehend the simplest of ideas. "If she is a plant, she and her life are my responsibility. You cannot blame me for not acting to help her when I thought she was human…"

Kiley snorted and interrupted. "Sure I can," she muttered.

Knives spoke over her. "But now that I have been informed that she is a superior being, leaving her in hands such as yours would be a criminal act."

"Now that you've been eavesdropping is more like it." Kiley put her gun up, pointing the muzzle towards the ceiling but not re-holstering the weapon. "You are so full of crap. What on this planet gives you the right to come in here and try to take her? Do you think she's an object that gets passed from hand to hand with no will of her own? Yes, I learned that she was a plant. That was what I gained from my fun little torture session this morning. But guess what? She could have told us that she wasn't human had she wanted us to know. She didn't, and while I may have learned something about her that you wanted to know, I was and am under no obligation to tell you anything, and especially not secrets that are not mine to tell."

"She is five months old. Her ability to reason is not fully formed. If she knew what I know she wouldn't want to be anywhere near you or any other filthy human." His eyes shot to the side. "Hello, Millie."

She stood behind her desk, one hand clamped firmly on the back of her chair. She was watching what went on intently, but didn't venture to say anything. 

Kiley didn't bother looking to see what Millie's reaction was to their conversation. Her eyes were locked onto Knives, waiting for his next grab at the child. She could feel Ace shivering against the backs of her legs. Waves of rage rolled through her body, waiting for an excuse to be unleashed. 

"Would you have accepted that reasoning when you were her age? She doesn't know what you know, and with any luck, she never will. Personally, I'm willing to keep away anyone she doesn't want near her. I don't know why you think she would need you."

"Because I am her kind," he replied, stepping forward a step. His face was only inches away from hers. "And you are nothing more then vermin."

Kiley reacted, letting the rage wash through her and do what it willed. Her arm came down, smashing into Knives' face, splintering the cheekbone and driving him to the floor in pain. She kicked his ribs hard, once, and then once in the thigh where she had shot him earlier.

"You are the only vermin I see here. You think that the world revolves around you and your needs. Did you stop once and ask yourself what Ace might want? I did, and she told me that she would rather be with me then you. How does that make you feel? How do you like knowing that she would rather be in the company of a lousy human instead of your exalted presence." She realized through a red haze that she was still kicking him and subsided. "And I'm still annoyed with you," she finished lamely.

Flushed, she looked at Ace, scared, worried over what she was going to see in her eyes. Thankfully, there was no censure, but there was sadness. Her heart fell as she realized that she had caused the girl pain. The corner of Kiley's mouth quirked in apology and she tried to calm down.

"Knives, the only way I'm leaving Ace is if she wants me to. If she wants you to tag along, I suppose I'll let you, but I suggest you ask."

He looked up and Kiley cringed at the sight of his already purple and swollen cheek. "You would have me beg of her?" he mumbled.

"No, I'd have you try to respect the wishes of another sentient being for once. It's up to you, but if she doesn't want to around and you still persist in following? Well, I look forward to beating you up. This is fun," she lied, her voice cold and betraying no hint of the self-hatred that was coursing through her veins. Damn, but she had enjoyed hurting him, enjoyed inflicting pain as a response to what he said. She was a monster. All the remorse in the world couldn't change the fact that she had enjoyed kicking him.

"Fine. Ace, do you want to have me around, as a fellow plant? I promise to try to keep you safe from the depredations of this human whose presence you seem to enjoy." He enunciated each world clearly despite the pain that must have caused him. Ace peeked out from behind Kiley's back. She looked at Knives and then at Kiley, then nodded.

Kiley sighed, then finally slipped her gun back in the holster. "Fine. She says you can come along." She put out a hand to help him up from the ground but he ignored her. He maneuvered himself into a seated position, but made no move to stand. She shrugged, then righted the chair that she had been sitting in when this whole mess started. 

Sighing again, she settled down, then looked at Millie. Millie still stood behind her desk, her gaze darting between the Kiley and Knives like she expected either or both of them to attack. When neither moved she sat down behind her desk, using the expanse of wood as a barrier.

"You are not a nice person," she accused Kiley.

"No, no I'm not," she replied tiredly. "Sorry about the mess."

********************************************************************************

Knives sat on the floor and did his best to not pass out. Since he was a superior form of being, his best was very good, but even that was not enough to ensure that he stayed awake.

He tried to listen to what was being said around him but the voices faded in and out, and what he could hear didn't make any sense. 

"Water orange delight sunglasses," said Kiley.

"For never one greater nickel," was Millie's response. The conversation continued on in the same vein, and he wondered idly if they were both being completely irrational just to mess with his mind. He discarded that notion after a few moments thought. No, he was just really messed up. He was proud of his ability to reach this conclusion; he was perfectly able to recognize that the world didn't revolve around him, no matter what she might say.

Another wave of pain threatened to roll him under, and his vision grayed as he fought it off. It wouldn't do to pass out in front of the vermin, but as another wave and another threatened to pull him into unconsciousness he began to wonder if being such a superior being was worth this pain. He was fairly certain that neither of the vermin here would kill him if he happened to pass out, although the tall one might, if she held a grudge. He didn't think that she did, but the potential threat helped him stay awake, if not aware. His mind traveled between the present and the recent past, and as a measure of how messed up he was, memory and reality blurred together.

Watching the woman walk away earlier in the day had been quite aggravating. He didn't know why she was so upset; by her own admission she had killed an unholy number of people. Why one more should bother her made no sense. And that babbling about being annoyed because she now had enemies? That was her own fault; if she had killed them all no one would be left alive who knew about her. The only good enemy was a dead enemy. Just like a human. An enemy-human. All good dead.

"He doesn't look very good," said the higher voice.

"It's his own fault. Leave him, unless he passes out," replied the lower one.

His leg had been bleeding, bleeding from being shot. Everyone liked to shoot him. Especially in the leg. He supposed it was better then everyone liking to shoot him elsewhere, like in his head, but it still hurt. A lot. And he was bleeding, his life dripping out of him in a steady trickle. He hated when that happened. Concentrating, because it was back then and he was able to concentrate, he focused on his leg and tried some of the accelerated cell growth that she had taught him. She said that it might cause cancer, if done wrong, but he wasn't going to do it wrong. He was a plant, a superior being, and if she could do it, he could do it. Better.

He thought he had it fixed, but it took him longer to do then he had anticipated. An hour later he was on the road. Two hours later he knew that he had done something wrong. His leg hurt, more now then it had when he had first been shot. It throbbed, throbbed, throbbed from his hip to his knee and sent spikes of pain from his shoulder to his toes and through his groin when he moved wrong. Unfortunately, moving wrong was much the same as walking, and he needed to do that.

"I can't believe you particular," said the high pitched voice, cutting into him and through his memories. Whatever was said in response was lost as he tumbled back into the grayness.

He didn't remember much of the travel to the orphanage, outside of his constant surprise as he topped each rise in the land. The woman could move, that was certain. He kept expecting to catch up with them, yet never seemed to. Then he reached the orphanage, and she wasn't there. Millie was, and her brother and his wife, but no one acted like there was anything out of the ordinary going on. He snuck around the buildings and climbed onto the roof of Millie's house. The flat-topped adobe structure had a low ledge running around it that hid him from casual view. He laid down over the window to her office and fought the low-grade pain that was running through him now that he had stopped moving. Maybe the woman would know what he did wrong, and would know how to fix it. 

He must have slept some, because the next thing he knew voices drifted up from Millie's office. He was content to merely listen in, as it involved the least amount of moving. But when the clear voice drifted up to him, informing him of the secret that had been kept from him, he tried to swing down from the roof. Somehow, he ended up heading towards the window when he was aiming for the ground. Trying to make the best of it, he crashed through and made a grab for the child.

Then the vermin had the audacity to stand between him and the girl who rightfully belonged to him. Her and her mutterings of the rights of the girl annoyed him. The child was too young to know what she wanted. He knew what was best for her, and it certainly wasn't hanging around with one of the vermin. He tried to take her but his body betrayed him. That woman beat on him, again, and he was too weak to do much more then lie there and take it. 

He had finally had enough. He didn't need the woman anymore, and his curiosity wasn't worth this much pain. She would not be difficult to get rid of later; she did sleep, after all. He mouthed the words she wanted, and was surprised that she actually seemed to be limiting herself to following the whims of the child. That could only work in his favor; children are easy to manipulate after all. 

*Don't be too sure of that* echoed in his head. That was enough to break him out of the trance that pain had thrown him into. Clear blue eyes drilled into his as Ace looked at him. *You were never a tractable child* she informed him. He would have laughed at that, but a stronger wave of pain hit him and he lost his tenuous grip on consciousness.

********************************************************************************

"So, do you have any advice for me?" asked Kiley hopefully.

Millie looked at her, eyes open wide. Her gaze traveled from Knives to Ace and back to Kiley. "Leave the child here," she said coldly.

Kiley drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment as her mind raced, then let it all out in one big whoosh. "Honestly? That was the plan. But I can't, now. Not when she's a plant; not when leaving her here puts all of you in danger."

"I think we can handle a child, plant or not. We have a lot of experience," said Millie.

Kiley's mouth quirked. "Never meant to imply that you couldn't. I killed someone this morning who was after the girl, who knew she was a plant. He and his buddies were willing to do whatever it took to take her back. It would be criminal for me to leave her where her presence put innocent lives in danger."

"My brother and I know how to handle trouble. I have seen a lot of it, when I was traveling with Mr. Vash."

Kiley shrugged, ignoring that specious argument. "Besides, the girl wants to come with me. I love her, she loves me, what more do you need?" she said flippantly, to cover the pain.

"You love her?" repeated Millie. 

She shrugged. "Yeah. I'd die to protect her. I've already killed to protect her, and that's something I promised myself I would never do again. Funny how easily some promises are broken," Kiley mused. "I'd do anything for this child, including giving her up if I felt that it was in her best interests. But I don't think it is. I don't think that anyone else is going to love her as much as I do, or be willing to go as far to protect her as I will. It's funny. A lot of people, when they say they'll do anything for someone, they don't really mean it. I do."

"You'll kill for her? That's everything to you?" asked Millie.

"No, I'll live with myself after breaking the one promise that used to mean everything to me. Her life is more important to me then my ability to look at myself in a mirror. I'll not lie to you; I hate the fact that I'm a killer. But I won't let my personal feelings about the general sanctity of life threaten her chances of growing up."

Millie looked doubtful. "You are not the sort of person who makes a good mother."

"I don't doubt that. I know more then anyone else on this planet about protecting and saving lives, skills she is going to need. I don't know how to raise a child. That's why I came here. I need advice, a few pointers, and not the 'no candy two hours before bed' type either. Knives," her voice laced the word with irony, "and I are going to be the closest thing she has to parents. I need to know what it takes to make a child grow into a happy and well-adjusted individual, and I need to know quick, before I put this place into danger."

"You need to love her," advised Millie quietly. 

"I've got that part down. I need specifics."

"Children don't come with instruction books. You need to remember that they are the most important things in the whole world, and treat them as such. They hold the future, and they take what you give with them as they travel there. If you give them love, they meet the future with an open heart. If you mistreat them they take pain with them instead. Always listen to what she has to say to you, both with words and actions. Sometimes the words will lie, but never the heart."

Kiley mouthed the words after she spoke, committing them to memory. "Is that all?"

"No, but that's the important stuff. The rest of being a parent comes with practice."

"I don't have much time to practice; she's going to grow up fast. What if I screw something up, practicing? How do I fix things?"

"Love. It heals all wounds, given time."

"Time." She sighed. "Something always in short supply. Any more words of sage advice?"

Millie stiffened. "There's no need to be mean," she said primly.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Kiley apologized. "I was just teasing. You've been very helpful." She looked around the room, eyes drifting over framed pictures and cracks in the walls. Millie didn't say anything more, and she wasn't willing to prompt her for more advice. "I'm not very good at saying thank you, but I'm in your debt. If you need me for anything, call."

"Call? You have a phone? They're very expensive."

Kiley laughed. "No, no phone. Call my name to the winds. I'll come if I can."

"Call your name to the winds?" she repeated dubiously. "That seems a bit of an inexact way to contact you."

"Eh, it'll get to me. I'm good at listening to the world around me. I don't know that you'll ever need the sort of help I can offer, but if trouble comes your way you can count on me to do what I can."

"I haven't told you anything special," protested Millie.

"I'll be the judge of what your advice means to me," Kiley responded primly. "Now let me wake up the humanoid bastard here and we'll leave you alone."

Millie looked at Knives, then looked out the window. The late afternoon sun turned the land golden. She turned back to Kiley and offered, "You are welcome to stay here overnight."

Kiley mulled over the thought and guessed at what it had cost the woman to offer it. "You don't need our sort of trouble. You have a lot of children you should be worrying about instead." She leaned forward and laid a hand on Knives' forehead. Ostensibly she was checking to see if he was feverish. In reality she flooded his body with a quick burst of energy. He regained consciousness quickly, his eyes opening to focus on hers only a few inches away. She backed off a bit as he glared.

"Let's go, plant boy. I think we've overstayed our welcome."

They managed to disentangle themselves from Millie's hospitality without much trouble. Kiley's feelings were a little hurt, but she couldn't blame her for wanting to see them leave. Something about the way she looked at Knives gave her the feeling that he had done something to her in the past that wasn't nice. And what, with her little temper tantrum in the office, it was no wonder she didn't mind seeing her go as well. The only person she seemed at all sad to see leave was Ace. 

"You take care now, little girl," she said brightly, waving. "Don't get into trouble!" Mille continued to shout bright phrases and wave as they walked away, her cheer a palpable presence at their back. Kiley tried to pretend that she didn't mind being ignored but mostly failed. Millie had been one of the good guys, willing to forgive anyone their evil deeds, and still she didn't like her. She sighed, slightly depressed, and tried to shake the feeling. What did she care? Why should the opinions of people she had never met mean anything to her? She was who she was, and nothing was going to change that. She shouldn't let what other people thought about her affect her.

After all, she couldn't blame them. Millie had summed it up perfectly. She was not nice. A nice person would not have survived what she had lived through, could not have done the things she had. She was ruthless and a killer and evil. So why did it hurt so much, those little words? She knew she wasn't a nice person, had known it for years. Her enemies would laugh at the thought that she even could even be capable of being nice. 

She glanced over at Knives. Nope, beating up on a wounded man wasn't nice. Kicking him where you knew it would hurt the most wasn't nice either. But it was effective, and a quick way of getting him to accede to reality. If he weren't so stubborn, she wouldn't need to break him to get him to agree to her demands, but he was and she did. So why did the shadow of pain on his face cast a shadow on her heart? It was his own fault, truly it was.

But she wished that there had been another way, a nicer way. 

He stumbled, finally, after they had left the orphanage behind. She had been waiting for this and caught him as he headed to the ground. He tried to break her grip but she held on fast as she lowered him gently to the road. 

"Let go of me, vermin," he croaked weakly.

"I both over and underestimated you," she said conversationally, ignoring his protests as she unfastened his jeans. She had worried a bit about his blood pressure, but the blush that lit his face as she found that he didn't wear underwear eased that fear. 

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked, squirming under her grip as she remorselessly pulled back his pants. 

"Oh, quit worrying about your virtue," she said distractedly as the remains of the gunshot wound came into view. "I thought it would take you longer to figure out how to heal this, but I also figured you would do a better job of it." She looked around for somewhere to tend it that wasn't in the middle of the road. Finding a likely spot, she picked up Knives in a fireman's carry and started towards it.

"Let me go, you crazy female!" he protested as she made her way to the chosen spot. He wriggled around, trying to escape, and she smacked his bare butt. "Stop that, or I'll drop you on your head." Shock held him still for a moment and she looked more closely at her chosen spot. Yes, there. She had thought there might be a bit of shelter over here.

She carefully lowered him to the ground, a task made more difficult by his scrambling about. Ace came after, dragging Kiley's pack. 

"You might as well get comfortable," she said to the girl. "I'm going to fix the mess he made of this leg. It's going to take awhile; he couldn't have made it much worse if he had tried." Ace nodded and sat quietly against a rock, her wide and solemn eyes ready to take in the procedure. 

Kiley's mouth quirked in a quick smile. Knives was still protesting his treatment as he lay on the ground, his hands decorously covering himself. Kiley smacked him lightly on the forehead with a finger. 

"Relax. I'm not after your sanctified flesh. The more agitated you are the harder this is going to be on both of us. Are you going to calm down, or am I going to have to trance you?"

Knives glared at her but shut up. "Fix your mess, human," he said coldly.

She laughed. "I left you with a clean wound. You're the one who made a mess. But since I'm such a good-hearted sort who doesn't want to wait for you as you limp around, well, I'm going to fix this," she said, lightly flicking the awful, bruised-looking patch on his leg.

He flinched but stayed quiet this time. His eyes closed and he visibly tried to relax. Kiley descended into a trance, focusing her entire attention on the mess before her. He had managed to fill in the space left by the bullet's passage, but he had done nothing to reattach the blood vessels that had been parted. Somehow, but she could not figure out exactly how he done it, but he had managed to keep the platelets from clotting. He was still bleeding, the blood pooling between the tissues of his leg. It was no wonder that he was in pain; what was hard to believe was that he wasn't in shock.

Time passed as she patched the broken vessels, carefully growing and joining the edges as she coaxed what she could of the leaked blood to the surface of his body. Gradually she relieved the pressure and finished the healing of his wound. She grew muscle fibers and knitted the ends together, filling the wound with healthy flesh and forcing out the scar tissue that Knives had produced. 

It was night when she finished up and broke trance. Knives had lit the area with little globes of yellow light and was regarding her steadily as she shook off the last bits of the trance. 

"You did not teach me how to do that," he said calmly as he pulled his pants back on. 

"You're supposed to be so smart; I thought you would be able to figure it out," she shot back. 

He flexed his leg. "It doesn't hurt."

"It shouldn't. Be careful with it, though, for a bit. The new flesh is not quite as strong as what was there before, and won't be for about a week."

"You did a good job," he said.

"Mm?" she said sleepily. "Of course I did. I've had lots of practice," she mumbled before passing out.

********************************************************************************

Knives looked down at the prone body of the female. He stood, cautiously putting weight on his leg. He leaned on it, stretching the muscle, waiting for it to hurt and surprised when it didn't. Maybe he was underestimating her. 

*You are.*

His head spun quickly to the left, seeking Ace. "It's rude to intrude in someone's thoughts," he informed her calmly. 

*What thoughts?* she replied impishly. *She's more then you give her credit for,* she continued on a more serious note. 

"She's human," he said dismissively. "She's nothing."

Ace laughed, but didn't comment on that. *You could learn a lot from her; she's pretty smart.*

"She might know a few tricks, but there's nothing she knows that I could not learn. I don't see why you try to make her into more then she is."

*There's nothing you know that she couldn't learn. It goes both ways. I don't see why you want to make her into less then she is. Is she such a threat?*

"A human, a threat?" he laughed. "She's no threat to me."

Ace pointed at her cheek. Knives flushed. "She took me by surprise when I wasn't feeling well."

She pointed at her leg. "I wasn't expecting that," he explained.

*Seems like she does a good job of catching you off-guard. One might think that makes her a threat.*

"Bah. She's nothing. I could kill her in an instant."

*If she let you fight fairly. Which she won't. She uses your assumptions against you, and still you never learn. If there is anyone on this planet that could be your equal, it's her.*

"And you know this because you've seen so many of the people on this planet?" he asked sarcastically.

*I know it because I've seen her.*

"I've been with her longer then you have," he said. "She's prone to these fainting spells after she does the least little thing," he added, nudging her side with his toe. 

*Healing you wasn't the least little thing, at least not the way she did it. You couldn't have done what she did.*

"I haven't the practice, that's all."

*You haven't the patience.*

"Hmph. I can be patient."

*Only when you are forced to be. She has learned the art of waiting, of letting things move in their own time, and making their own time hers.*

"How do you know so much about her and what she can do? You've hardly been with her for a day."

*Her mind is not as guarded towards me as it is towards you. I learned a bit about who she is. Did you know that she died?*

"So she says."

*Do you know why?*

"Do I care?"

*She was stopping a war. Humans and Genalts had been fighting for generations. Death and destruction were ravaging the earth. She saw the waste of life and wanted it to stop. So she tried to end the hate.*

"I actually prefer the deaths of the countless thousands to peace if it means that more humans live."

*No you don't. You act like it doesn't bother you, but you'd rather not kill.*

"You're young. I'll let you harbor an illusion or two."

Ace let that one go by. *She was killed because those who profited by the war saw that she had a good chance of ending it. She wanted people to be equal. She treated everyone equally under her command, and had the skills to lead, the necessary blackmail material, and the ruthless nature that would have made her a political force to be reckoned with. I'm sure you don't know that she worries over the people she left behind, wondering what they are doing now, and hoping that they might find peace without her.*

"Her? Worry over them? They betrayed her. Why should she care anymore? They gave up their rights to her protection when they sent her to her death."

*The actions of others cannot dictate how you feel about them. She had always expected them to turn on her, so their actions were not a betrayal, or she didn't see it as such.*

"She's more forgiving then I would be, then."

*She knows how much evil she is capable of, and it makes her more forgiving of it when she sees it in others. Maybe too forgiving,* she said critically. *Every time she is forced to pass judgment on someone she feels like she is sentencing herself. She forgives everyone in the hope that it might help them forgive her. It makes her too lenient.*

"So cynical for one so young."

*She was betrayed by the one man she had ever allowed near her heart, left to fall out of the back of an airplane and into the hands of her enemies. These enemies proceeded to torture her to death, and she still manages to forgive him. She takes the blame for his actions on herself, saying that she deserved it, that there was no other choice available to him.*

"How nice for him," he said, bored.

*You don't understand. He had many other options. He could have forgiven her, could have accepted that she had changed from the person she used to be, could have left, could have done any number of things that would be less harmful then betrayal. She died in agony, and he was promoted to fill her position. His betrayal was less a censure of what she had done then it was a means for him to advance his career.*

"I don't really care."

She sighed. *She drags her past around behind her and uses it to explain why people screw her over.*

"Such language from one so young."

*I'm just trying to explain why she's quite so obnoxious.*

"Well, you're failing miserably."

*She expects people will hurt her. It makes her defensive. She doesn't let anyone like her, doesn't let anyone close so when they do hurt her the pain is cushioned.*

"So she doesn't like people. Big deal."

*I didn't say that. She likes a lot of people. She actually even likes you. But let anyone know that she likes them? Never. It gives them the power to hurt her more. She can only stand so much pain, and it's far better to be betrayed by an enemy then by a friend.*

"She likes me?" He was surprised. "I thought she hated me," he said, fingering the bruise on his cheek.

*She respects you, and thinks you're a good person at heart. She wouldn't mind being friends.*

"Me? Friends with her?" he said, shocked. "Is she mad?"

*She knows you aren't the friend-making type. But that doesn't stop her from wishing that things could be different.*

He looked at her appraisingly. "You picked up all of this from her mind?"

Ace shrugged. *It was a long and boring trip. Besides, I needed to know if I could trust her and what was going on between you two.*

"She's human; you can't trust her."

Ace's mouth quirked in a wry smile. *She would sooner die then betray a trust. I can trust her father then I can you.*

"You can trust me," he said, affronted and hurt.

*I know. I can trust you with my life. I can still trust her more.*

"I can hardly believe you would say that. She's human."

*You're prejudiced. She's a good person.*

He tapped his leg. "Good people don't shoot others, then leave them in the middle of the desert."

Ace rolled her eyes. *She knew you could handle that. She could have just killed you; you know you made her pretty mad.*

"She didn't seem too upset. Annoyed, I think is how she put it."

Ace nodded. *Annoyed, but there are degrees of annoyance. She was really, really mad at you. Still is, actually. You did something that hurt her to her very soul. She hates killing, hates it like only a healer can.*

"Her? A healer? It's difficult to imagine." He looked at the sprawled figure beside him. Even in sleep her face lost none of its hard edges. According to Ace it was only her defense against the world. It looked more to him like she was just a cold bitch. 

*She did a good job on your leg, didn't she?* 

He rubbed his leg absently and nodded. "Much as I'd like to, I can't say she didn't do a good job."

*Better then you did. Doesn't it strike you as somewhat odd that a person who had dedicated their life to killing others would then turn around and save them?*

"She said she was assigned the job. It wasn't like she had a choice."

*She had the choice to do a good job or do a decent one. She would never say it, but a good part of the reason that the life expectancy of people in her unit went up was because she refused to let anyone else die on her. Not her patients and certainly not her comrades. You shouldn't underestimate what she can achieve when she decides to do something. She is smart, stubborn, and incredibly lucky. She wins because she can't conceive that she might possibly lose.*

"Everyone loses. Only fools believe they can win all the time."

*She is a healer. Healers cannot accept the thought of losing, not when the consequences are so high. If it were only her own life, she would not try so hard. But she feels that since she took so much life from the world she needs to give some back. She has practiced until she has more knowledge in many fields then most specialists. Few people back on her world could have healed your leg like she did. Taking away the swelling and stopping the hemorrhaging is part of one field, and the precision work that was needed to reattach the severed muscle fibers is another.*

"So she's special. Why should I care?"

*Why shouldn't you? Why should someone need to do something to earn your attentions? Why shouldn't you care when you first meet someone, instead of after deeming them worthy?*

"My brother does that. He's miserable."

*You have a brother?* She was shocked. 

"Yes. I have a brother. I'm sure you'll meet him someday."

*What's his name? Does he look like you? Is he nice? Why is your brother miserable?* She continued to ask questions, but Knives ignored them. 

"His name is Vash, we look like brothers, he's a pain in the ass, and he's miserable because he insists on believing that humans are more then insects. Now quit pestering me; I'm tired and have had a long day."

*I'm sorry,* she said contritely. *I didn't mean to pester. I didn't know that there were any other plants outside the bulbs until I saw you. It's nice to not be alone.*

His anger melted away. "Come here," he ordered. His arms enfolded her, holding her tight. "You are not alone, not now, and not ever again. I will always be here for you," he said softly. He buried his face in her hair while she snuggled close in his arms, relaxing against his body.

*Thank you. You aren't alone now either. I'll grow up soon and be able to take care of you, too.*

He smiled at the thought. "Right now we'll just worry about getting you grown up." He thought about asking her about those men, but decided that now was not the time. In the morning, perhaps. Now was a time for relaxing and sleeping, and talk of those men would bring neither.

*She'll take care of you, too.*

Knives felt his shoulders tense at the thought. "I don't need a human to look after me. I especially don't need her."

*I didn't say you needed her,* she responded, exasperated. She squirmed in his arms but he didn't let her go. *Just because you're going to look after me, is that supposed to mean I need you?*

"You do need me. You're too young to be on your own."

*Now, yes. But when I'm grown up are you still going to look out for me?*

"Of course. I'm not going to stop caring just because you've grown up."

*That's how she'll take care of you. If you ever get in trouble, you can count on her to help you out of it.*

"Why would she do that?"

*I told you. She likes you. She protects the things she likes.*

"I don't want her protection."

*Like she cares about that?* Ace let out an unladylike snort. *She does what she pleases whether she likes you or not. Once she decides you're worthy of her favor, you're sunk. You'll never be rid of her.*

Knives sighed. "Great. I suppose you won't let me kill her now and save us the trouble of her presence? No, don't answer. I know." He stared at her sleeping form and pondered nothing in particular. "I knew she was going to be trouble the moment I set eyes on her. I just never realized what type."

*She's cold.*

"So she is," he remarked. "She has a blanket."

*No, she's cold inside. She used up a lot of energy to fix your leg; it's part of why she's so skinny.*

"I don't think I like where this conversation is going." He glared at the girl, who only looked at him with a wicked gleam in her eye.

*You know what we need to do.*

*******************************************************************************

Kiley woke up slowly, warm and secure where she slept. Her mind clung to sleep and she let it, feeling sure that knowledge of whatever she did last night would come in time. She was equally sure that she would not like it; her mind only tried to protect her when something bad had happened. So she floated in between sleep and the real world, content and warm for as long as she could.

Gradually she became aware of arms holding her close. Huh. It wasn't often that she and Jeff fell asleep together. Only when the day had been too bad for either of them to face the night alone did they remain in each other's arms. She tried harder to stay asleep, unwilling to face whatever the day would bring, but slowly the world took focus around her. She could smell feathers and thought that they were in her room, but the light forcing itself against her eyelids had to come from his room, as hers had no windows. 

The body by hers was too slender. Jeff was muscled and tough, a strongly built tank of a man who rolled over opposition. The body next to hers was slimmer, softer, wrong. What did she do last night?

Her eyes finally opened and for a minute she didn't understand what she saw. This wasn't the base. She was too relaxed to have been on a mission; where was she?

Oh. Bloody. Hell. She moved her head to the side and caught a glimpse of blonde hair. Everything fell in on her in a moment, her capture, her torture, her death, arriving here, Knives. It was Knives. She had healed his leg, passed out… She hadn't gone into energy shock, but she had danced close to that edge. She didn't know why he had decided to help her stay warm, but she appreciated the thought. She liked it so much she wasted no time scrambling away. 

She sat on a rock and watched a sleepy and amused Knives watch her. Ace was curled up against his back; as she watched the child stretched like a cat and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Knives patted the girl absently on the shoulder and Kiley scowled.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked politely. 

"Fine," she replied curtly. 

"It seemed a small enough repayment for the job you did on my leg," he commented.

"That's nice."

Silence fell. She stared at her feet, annoyed with the Knives, the world, and life in general. Knives looked at her quizzically. What was her problem? He did something nice for once and she was affronted. Hmph, humans. Illogical creatures.

"What do you plan on doing now?" he asked, trying to change the subject, but unsure what the subject had been.

"Hmm. Well, I was thinking we could head back to the oasis. I'm not done teaching you yet, and it seems nice and isolated."

"We could go back to my ship," he offered.

Her head shot up, anger evident in every line of her face. "Like hell. The oasis is neutral ground; your ship is too much yours. You would probably lock me up in a cell as soon as you got me in the door."

Since he had been entertaining thoughts along those lines, he wisely didn't comment. "The ship has learning materials. The oasis has…sand. And rocks."

"And it will have you and me. Between us, I think we can manage to teach her the basics. I'll head back into town and pick up some clothes and books for the girl. You take her and head for the oasis." 

He looked at her with surprise. "You trust me to take her out of your sight? You don't think I'm going to run off with her and have my wicked way?"

She shot him a disgusted glance. "There is nowhere on this planet you can go that I cannot follow you. You're a plant; tracing your life energy is child's play."

"You can find me by my… life energy?" he asked.

"Of course I can. What do I look like, a moron? You have the ability to power a small city; do you think that would be hard to trace?"

"I didn't know it was possible to find someone that way."

Kiley rolled her eyes. "I forget about you and this benighted planet sometimes. Everyone has a power signature that is tied into their life force. Everything living has one. The more powerful you are, the easier it is to track you by it, unless you know how to mask it."

"Which you do, of course," he said flatly. 

"Or course I do," she said testily. "And no, I'm not teaching you."

"Fine. Come, Ace. The mistress demands we depart her presence." He leaned over to pick up his pack.

Kiley's head shot up. "I didn't say that!" she protested.

"You have been most unpleasant all morning," he said calmly. "I don't need to stay here and take it."

Ace ran over and gave her a hug. Kiley hugged her numbly in return, letting go only when the girl pulled away. She watched as Knives picked her up, watched as they left, watched as they moved out of sight.

Slowly she moved from her seat, falling to her knees and picking up her blanket. She lifted it up to fold it, and the scent of him rose and hit her nose. How could she tell him she had felt safe, had felt betrayed when she realized that it was only him? She held the blanket under her chin and sighed. She shouldn't worry about offending Knives; he hated her already. There was nothing she could do that could make him not hate her; she was human, or close enough. The dammed, prejudiced, racist plant. And he made her feel like she was the one wrong. He was the one who had tricked her into thinking she was safe. It was all his fault.

It wasn't fair.


	14. Knives hits the town

I don't own Trigun. Have we all gotten this?

*hugs the people she talks to online* I tell you guys, I *like* the IM programs. 

********************************************************************************

A young man sauntered into December that afternoon. He entered whistling, hands thrust into pockets of pants slung low over slender hipbones. He slouched down the street with a casual air, looking at nothing in particular. His path brought him up streets and down as he meandered through the city. 

He may have looked at nothing in particular, but everything his gaze fell upon was cataloged, every person was evaluated, every store, every house, every building was seen and remembered. His dreamy eyes looked out from under a fall of soft brown hair and they saw everything there was to see.

When he was sure that he had attracted no notice he ducked into a store. Clothes of all sorts lined the walls. Business suits and leisure suits, formal dresses and party dresses, clothes for adults and clothes for children. He wandered aimlessly through the racks of clothes, looking at everything available but lingering near nothing.

"May I help you?" asked a sales clerk as he fingered a silk blouse. The sales force had drawn lots to see who got to help him…help him back onto the street, that is. He was much too poorly dressed to belong in their establishment. There was always the off chance that he might be in here to buy a special gift for his girlfriend, and in that case she would help him. But actually getting some commission from the unlikely sale? Laughable.

He dropped the sleeve and looked at her. She kept smiling as his gaze traveled over her body, kept smiling as his eyes lingered where perhaps they should not, and kept smiling as he turned to her with a lecherous grin. Her mouth kept smiling, but her gaze had turned frosty. 

"Well aren't you the sweetest?" said the…gentleman. She kept smiling but gritted her teeth before responding.

"Is there something in particular you are looking for?" She should have worn her yellow dress. No one looked at her like that when she wore her yellow dress. 

"I'm just looking," he commented, winking at her to make sure she didn't miss the point. He turned away after that and started to wander to another part of the store. 

"If you are not planning on purchasing something, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave," she said to his back. She motioned to a couple male clerks who had been watching. They started towards her, then stopped. 

Puzzled, she turned around. The young man had turned back and held in his hand an obscenely large roll of bills. 

"Do be a dear and help me look," he said, slipping her another wink.

Slightly more cheered and much more willing to overlook his boorish behavior she moved closer and grabbed his arm.

"What exactly are you looking for again?" she asked, pressing herself close.

He looked a bit started but didn't push her away. 

"Well. Um. My sister, she has a passel of kids. I found myself with a bit of cash and thought I would treat them all to a nice set of clothes. You know, the sort of boring gift a respectable uncle would give." His voice gave the word respectable an extra bit of emphasis, and the clerk sympathized with the sister. She would hate to have a boor like this as a brother, too.

But the commission! Looking at the money crumpled in his hand, she mentally calculated what she would do with her portion. She could finally repaint the kitchen, and add curtains, and maybe even a window box. "How many children does your sister have," she asked sweetly, steering him over to the children's area. 

"Six. One a year from six to twelve. The prettiest set of kids you ever did see, that they are. Five boys and a baby girl spoiled beyond belief."

"What's her name?"

"Kate. Little Katie Marie, the sweetest little gal you ever did see. She has the biggest brown eyes and the worlds prettiest smile." His eyes found a cute little shirt, pink and yellow stripes with bows tacked down the sleeves. "And I think you just led me to the perfect little outfit for her." He picked up the shirt and matching yellow pants, then allowed himself to be led into the boys section. He spent almost an hour picking out their clothes and teasing the sales clerk. 

"I'd also like to get a little something for myself, since I see to have some cash left over," he said with a smile. Looking over the selection before him, he finally settled on a silk shirt dyed a soft blue that almost matched the color of the morning sky. The clerk protested that the color would not look right on him, but he overrode her. "I'm not a fashion plate. I like the color; it'll be fine."

Finally he moved towards the cashier's station. Mentally, she cheered the thought that he would be leaving, but she felt compelled to make one last effort to increase her commission. She could almost afford that window box…

"Aren't you going to buy something for your sister?" she asked.

He stopped mid-step and looked surprised. "Her?" He paused before continuing. "I guess I could, but it's really just a waste of cash buying for her."

"That's not a nice thing to say," she told him, punching his shoulder lightly. "Why shouldn't she get something, too?" 

He looked at her and shrugged. He looked around the room and his eyes settled on a breezy linen dress of deep forest green. "That, I guess," he said, pointing and shrugging.

She looked at him oddly. "Are you sure? You spent more time shopping for yourself then you did your sister." He didn't respond and she didn't press the issue. She was afraid that she had offended him, but when she met up with him at the counter he smiled and winked at her again. 

After checking him out he passed a $$100 bill over her hand then dropped it in her palm. "You have been a great help," he said solemnly, then picked up his neatly wrapped parcels and left the shop. The clerk watched him go, glad to be rid of him, and already mentally spending the windfall. 

*******************************************************************************

"One step finished," thought Kiley to herself as she wandered in search of her next stop.

Kiley wandered into a bookstore. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of so many paper books. There were almost as many bound books in this one store as she remembered seeing in the rare book library back home. She knew that this planet was a bit more primitive then the one she had come from, but there was a part of her that had expected to see readers and data discs. The shelves and shelves of books represented a wealth of knowledge.

She picked up a volume and winced. It seemed that paper was almost as expensive here as it was back on earth. Her money wasn't going to cover much more before running out. The volume was slipped back on the shelf and she spent a few more moments browsing before leaving the store. She had one more trip to make before calling it a night.

It was a rather sad commentary on the state of society that she had less trouble finding the next store then she had in locating the bookstore. 

A little bell tinkled as she walked in, and the youngish man behind the counter looked up from what he was reading. Light glinted off the wire rim of his glasses as he picked up a bookmark and closed the book. 

"May I help you?" he asked politely. 

"I'm looking for a bit of a backup gun," she asked, still in her persona of a rough young man. "Nothing too big, nothing too hard to handle, I'm looking for accuracy and ease of use."

"Were you thinking along the lines of a .22? We have a few very nice one shot weapons--"

"No," she interrupted. "It may be a backup, but I believe in a little more backup then that. I was thinking more along the lines of something like a lady's pistol."

"You sound like you're planning to get in some trouble," said the man as he pulled a few guns from under the counter. "No, no, don't tell me. I don't want to know why you think you need a lot of firepower. I'm probably better off not knowing."

Kiley smiled. "You're a wise man," she said as she picked up a medium-small pistol and stared down the sights. "This one looks nice, but how does it shoot?" 

"You have a good eye. That's a Marlon. Not many of those left. They shoot rather well, but you don't need to take my word for it. Here, follow me." He grabbed a few shells from a box on the shelf behind him and went to lock the front of the store. Kiley held the gun loosely, bemused but ready to fight if she had to. "You can leave your packages up here; no one will touch them," he said, motioning for her to follow him through a door at the back of the shop.

It led to stairs that went down below the level of the street. "We have our own little gun range dug out of the bedrock down here," explained the clerk as Kiley followed him. "Our customers can test out weapons to their hearts content and we don't even bother the neighbors. Ah, here we are," he remarked as he unlocked another door. They entered a room that stretched yards before them; a shooting range. 

"If you will just hand me that," he asked, taking the gun from her hand and trading her ear protectors. "Here you go," he said when he had finished loading the weapon. Kiley nodded as she took it. The clerk set up a target and sent it out to fifty yards.

"Farther," she said as she looked down the sight.

It moved out to seventy-five yards, paused for a moment, and was sent to a hundred yards without her having to say anything.

She focused on the target, fixing its position in her mind, then focused on the front sight, relaxing into the pull of the trigger. The pull was nice and easy, a soft squeezing of pressure before the trigger broke, the cylinder cycled, and a nice little hole appeared in the middle of the target. 

"That's some nice shooting," commented the clerk. She didn't respond, except to send the next five shots close enough to the first for there to be one ragged hole in the paper.

"It's a nice gun. How much?" she asked, turning to the clerk. His eyes were a little wide as he brought the target back. 

"One hole? That's amazing shooting! I have never seen someone do that," he gushed.

Kiley suppressed a sigh. "Then you don't get many good shooters down here, do you?" she asked rhetorically. "How much for the gun?" she asked again.

He continued to stare at her, speechless. She snapped her fingers in front of his face. "The gun, how much? Hello?"

He shook himself. "Ah, yes, the Marlon." He named a figure that didn't startle her, but did slightly dismay her. It pretty much took care of her bounty, and she still had stuff she needed to buy. 

Oh well. There were plenty of ways to make money. "I'll take it," she told him, following him back up the stairs. 

"Are you a bounty hunter?" inquired the clerk.

"I've been known to capture one or two," she said. "It's not my job, though."

"What do you do?" he asked, gushing. She merely stared at him silently. Some of the jubilation left his face, and she relented. 

"I don't do much of anything except find trouble."

He risked a small smile. "I'm glad that you are buying the Marlon. I've been a little afraid that some fool was going to buy it for 'home protection' and end up shooting himself with it. You look like you'll do the weapon honor."

She looked at him with an odd expression on her face. "Weapons don't have honor. They are made to harm, to kill. Where's the honor in that?"

"Well," he sputtered, "you don't have to use them to kill."

"A gun has no other purpose, and if you pick it up just expecting it to be a threat you will be sadly mistaken. The weapon has no honor, but I do. Don't worry," she offered as she passed over her cash. "This weapon will be used as its creator intended. I am only amused when I find another adherent to the cult of the gun-as-a-threat." With that, she picked up the gun and holster, slipped it into one of her packages, and left the store, shaking her head at the naiveté of some people.

Many stores were now beginning to close for the night, so Kiley headed to a hotel and rented a room. She dropped off her purchases off and headed to the restaurant attached to the lobby. She ordered a very standard steak dinner and found herself picking at it while looking around at all the happy couples and families. She didn't see anyone else eating all alone, and she hated the feeling of exclusion. Eating by herself felt wrong, boring, staid, and dull. She found that she actually missed Knives' company, strange as that was. Maybe she was just tired of being alone. That must be it. All these pictures of family bliss arrayed around the room must be getting to her.

After finishing her lonely meal she returned to her room and pulled out the dress. She wasn't sure what had compelled her to buy the pointless expanse of cloth, but she had a use for it now. Laying it on the beige comforter to let some of the wrinkles fall out, she retreated to the bathroom for a deluxe pampering session. She drew herself a bath and soaked in water as hot as she could stand until every pore had opened up. She scrubbed away the dirt and dead skin that had accumulated over her desert trip, rinsed, and scrubbed again until she was sure that every last trace of grime was gone. 

She stepped out of the tub and dried off. Looking in the mirror, she focused on her nose instead of her eyes and stared at her face. She didn't need to do much to achieve the look she desired, but she did change the color of her eyes to a green that matched the dress. She ran her fingers through her hair, drying it, curling it, and changing its color to a deeper brown as she went. Soft little ringlets glistened with red highlights under the bathroom lights, and she nodded, satisfied. She looked nothing like herself. 

She added a flush of pink to her cheeks and left to get dressed. The dress sat where she had left it, somehow managing to feel accusing as it lay on the bed. It was almost as if it didn't approve of what she was going to do tonight, but that was silly. It was an inanimate object whose only feelings were projections of her own, and she had no problems with tonight's course of action. Regardless of that, it seemed to sag dispiritedly in her hands as she picked it up.

A few moments and a bit of wriggling later she stood before the mirror on the wall, assessing her reflection. Nothing was going to disguise the muscles in her bare shoulders and arms, but her hands were relatively soft, not hardened or roughened by labor. She rubbed her upper arms and reflected on all the times that she had been glad of the strength they contained. Even remembering her pride in what she could do with them, she found she was slightly ashamed of the precisely defined muscles. She just didn't look like the ideal of feminine beauty.

There was little softness about her. Every edge was chiseled, sharp and firm. Try as she might, she never seemed able to eat enough to keep the nice soft parts that made being a woman fun. Her hands smoothed down the front of the dress and she grimaced at the nearly flat plane. She felt like a boy, which wasn't such a bad thing most of the time, but certainly wasn't what she wanted to feel like when she wore a dress. It was too easy for her to pretend to be a guy; when the sales clerk had attached herself to her arm this afternoon, she hadn't even noticed anything was unusual. 

Almost she took the dress off again, but her plan would work best if she wore it. Her hands shaped and smoothed the cloth as she turned this way and that. She would do, it would do. She pulled on a pair of sandals and picked up a wad of cash, tucking it neatly in her palm. This was it; the last of her money. Tonight's plan needed to work, or she was going to be in trouble.

When she left the hotel it was nearly eight. The suns had set, but only minutes ago. The streets were dim but even the unlit ones were not quite dark as she traveled along them. She walked purposefully to the east, taking one street and another until she stood in front of a well-lit building. Signs and lights proclaimed the home of the "largest casino on the planet." Putting on her game face, she strode in the doors and headed straight to the bar. 

She shoved a bill at the bartender and demanded something cheap and strong. He complied and she threw it back, gasping as the raw liquor hit her throat.

"Another," she choked out as she set the glass on the counter. He complied, giving her an odd look, and she repeated the gesture. 

"Another," she demanded after choking and coughing for a full minute.

"Look, miss, I don't think you should be drinking so many so fast," he said. "What's got you down?" The rest of the bar was nearly empty as most of the patrons of the casino spent their time gambling. There were a couple regulars nursing their drinks near the other end, and a couple of men lost in some deep discussion at one of the booths. He had time to ask, and she seemed eager enough to spill her tale.

"He left me," she said, wondering if it was too soon to cry. She decided that a tear would be all right, and one trickled slowly down her cheek. "The bastard left me. We were going to be married in a month. A month!" she wailed, and another tear wended its way down her cheek.

"There, there," comforted the bartender. "That's no way to treat a woman. He doesn't deserve a pretty girl like you." He handed her a napkin as the tears, once started, continued to fall. "There's no point making yourself sad. Here," he said, fishing in a pocket. He pulled out a $$20 token. "Take this, find a game, and try to forget about him for a bit."

"That's why I came here," she said with a sniff, wrapping her fingers around the token. She tried a smile, and knew that it came out strained. 

"Here," he said, mixing her another drink. "This one will be a little nicer on you," he offered, and watched as she tried it. It was actually rather nice, or would have been if she liked mixed drinks. She sipped it slowly and made appreciative noises as the man tried to cheer her up. 

Finally, she allowed herself to be coaxed to the floor. She paused at the entrance, surveying the chaos before her with an uncomprehending glance before descending. Behind her shocked façade, she smiled. Things were going perfectly so far.

The casino was fairly large. There were rows and rows of slot machines and one-arm bandits, each with lights flashing and ringing bells designed to entice. Beyond this gauntlet lay the card and dice tables. These were her true targets, but she allowed herself to be distracted by the mechanical slot machines that were arrayed in a cluster near the middle of the group. She slipped a coin into the waiting slot and pulled the arm. The machine whirred and clicked as the cylinders spun on their axis. A little nudge here, and a quick stop there, and a few more coins then she had put in came spilling out the slot.

She gathered them up and moved on. Doing too well here would surely attract attention, but it had helped her gain a few more tokens. Now she had about $$50 as a beginning stake. The dice tables called to her, but she abstained from the easy money. Dice that landed well always attracted attention, and she had had enough of attention lately. She just wanted to win some money, and maybe have a little fun. But money first. 

She made her way through the tables, looking for one that was playing her favorite game and had an open chair. There were many people moving about the floor, a tide of humanity eddying and flowing around the tables. Glad shouts and groans of dismay coupled with loud conversations, louder dealers, and shouts for liquor and beer created a deafening cacophony of sound. Through the spectators and players at the tables circulated security and a sales force willing to supply a plurality of vices.

It was a busy place, but it seemed a bit small to her to be the largest casino on the planet. She knew that she was spoiled by her time living in a more technologically developed society, but this place just felt a bit too quaint to be as pretentious as it claimed. She kept trying to erase the faint smile of smug superiority that tried to cross her features but it kept returning. The casino wasn't small, but to be the biggest on the planet? She didn't dispute the claim, but how…darling.

She did manage to compose herself by the time she found an open table. Slipping into a empty seat, she asked, "Do you mind?" No one at the table did. The dealer smiled and dealt her in, the man at his left nodded to her politely, and the man at her left made an encouraging noise of assent.

It was good that they had all answered her vague question, and better that they had answered positively. The cards she was dealt had been touched by all three of the men, and that link, coupled with their tacit assent created a whole wealth of possibilities. She already knew what she wanted to do, and wasted no time establishing a link between her mind and their eyes.

Superimposed over what she saw were visions of the world through their eyes. Primarily discovered as a scouting technique, and used to allow a scoutmaster better control over people in the field, it hadn't taken long for the little trick to be used in poker games. Seeing through the eyes of others was slightly disorienting and took a great deal of getting used to, but she had the practice. She juggled her visions with what she was dealt, using her knowledge of what cards were already played and who had the stronger hands to decide when to bid and when to fold. She coupled this with great quantities of alcohol, drinking much more then a girl her size could and stay sober, throwing back shots of liquor and laughing a lot.

Slowly but steadily her stake began to grow, past $$50, past $$100, and then beyond $$500. As she approached $$1000 the man to her left got up from the table and called it a night. His replacement was a better poker player, betting less when he would lose and more when he would win. She won money slower, but still her stake grew. As it reached $$1500 she felt a presence by her elbow. 

"We have noticed that the Madame is winning a great deal here," breathed a voice in her ear. "Perhaps you would wish to try your luck at a different table?"

She turned bleary eyes on the speaker. "But I like it here," she said, enunciating each word with the overly precise care of one who has imbibed too much. 

"You will like it at this table better," he promised. She allowed herself to be led away and to a room off the floor. The man who had accompanied her bowed and left after passing her off to another man at a door near the back. 

The new man led her to a place at another table, one where the antes were larger and so were the stakes. Again she tapped into their eyes as she sat down, and she allowed herself the luxury of a small smile before play began. This was where she had wanted to be, where the winnings would be large enough to support three indigent people for a decent span of time. 

The players were better back here, more canny and cunning then the men on the floor. Her presence was a novelty, but theirs was common. Some of the players were professional gamblers, and some were the rich upper classes that were their prey. She knew that she was only here because she had been lucky, because her presence was something to break up the monotony of playing against the small group of people who could afford the stakes.

That was fine by her; she wasn't planning on becoming a regular. Gambling this way was an easy way to make money, but she preferred other pursuits. Playing this way was practically stealing, and she had too much at risk to play the right way. 

Again, she started to win more then she lost, but this time her stake grew much more quickly. $$2000, $$3000, then $$5000, and no one so much as blinked at the pile of tokens that slowly accrued before her. After getting to $$7500, she yawned and stretched, dropping her cards from fingers grown slack. She giggled.

"I guess I'm too tired to play anymore," she explained as she picked one up from the floor. The cards from her hand went in a little pile before her and she collected her tokens. The players nodded polite goodbyes, and no one moved to stop her as she moved mostly steadily towards the door. 

She cashed in her tokens and left the casino, careful to make sure that she wasn't being followed. It wasn't so much that she expected to be waylaid and mugged as it was she was pretty much prepared for it. This was a fairly lawless planet, after all. Regardless, she was disappointed. No one tried to follow or stop her as she made her way back to the hotel. 

Upon reaching her room she quickly shucked off the dress and dropped the money on the bed, then found the toilet and threw up. Tricks and alcohol just don't mix, and what she did was walking the fine line between what was and wasn't allowed. Her head ached with the effort of keeping conflicting images straight while pretending that everything was normal. She was tired to the bone, so tired that she ached for bed, but still feeling so sick that she wasn't about to stir from her place on the floor.

She passed half the night floating in and out of consciousness, managing to be sick a couple more times before finally feeling well enough to seek her bed. 

Easy money, she thought wryly before slipping into sleep. 

She awoke early in the morning, regardless of the night she had experienced. Relaxing and actually getting enough sleep to get rid of the tired feeling would have been nice, but she just didn't have the time. She needed to be checked out of the hotel by eleven, but that gave her hours she could use to shop without having to cart her packages about. Stretching, she tried to work out some of the kinks of a night half spent on the floor. Pulling on jeans and a shirt, she resumed the posture and mien of a man with a moment's thought.

The dress lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. She was tempted to leave it there, leave it and the feelings of inadequacy it created in her behind, but beyond a momentary fantasy she acknowledged the gesture as pointless. Sighing and kneeling to pick it up, she saw something she had missed last night. Someone had pinned a colored piece of cloth to the hem of the dress. Most likely it was some sort of size tag, but she felt a little foolish to have been wandering about in public with that attached. She detached it and tossed the cloth but kept the pin. Never could have too many sharp pointy objects. 

She packed away everything that she could, and looked dispiritedly at what was left over. Clothes still lay all over the floor, packaged and loose, and there was no way she was going to be able to fit them all in her pack. She shrugged and added a new bag to her list of things to buy. As long as she was trying to tote about less than a hundred pounds she would be fine, but she hated the attention large luggage brought. Plus, it was always so unwieldy and in the way. 

Well, she wasn't taking it all too very far, and her travels wouldn't be taking her through any towns, so she should be alright. It might offend her sense of propriety, but that was an offense easily overlooked. 

She left her room and returned to the bookstore. The selection arrayed before her still boggled her mind, but she was better prepared to accept the concept of paper books this time, and lost no time staring in awe before looking for the books she wanted. Given the prices, she selected only five volumes. All of them were fiction works, all considered classics. After deciding on which to buy, she checked her watch and decided that she had a little time left to browse before she needed to get food. 

The smell of the store was intoxicating, paper and leather and hints of the glue used in the binding. The hush of paper on paper as pages turned, the soft sounds of volumes being taken from shelves were musical notes in a composition she could barely discern. Motes of dust danced in streams of golden morning sunlight, softly drifting in and out of the beams of illumination. Her eyes followed one mote until it landed, and then her eyes focused on the title of the book it had landed. 

Plant Mechanics. She walked over to it and slipped it from the shelf. Leafing through the pages she noted that it seemed to be a textbook of some sort, detailing what was known and surmised about the plants. 

Hmm. How interesting.

She added it to her stack of books to purchase and looked for similar volumes on the shelf but couldn't find any. She denied the urge to sit in one of the big comfortable chairs arrayed around the store. She had a little extra time, but not much, and she knew she would quickly run out of it if she started to read. Instead, she took her purchases to the counter. She watched as they were packed with brown paper and string, wrinkling her nose at the quaintness of the gesture while admitting that the harshness of the environment did make such protection necessary. 

Her next stop was for a larger bag and a pair of sandals for Ace to grow into. Most likely, the girl would run around barefoot, but having a shoe option about would be a good thing. She found the farmer's market and purchased as much food as she thought she could carry, trying her best to find nutritious and balanced food group items that could keep indefinitely without need of refrigeration. It wasn't an easy task and dairy had her completely stumped. She tried to cover the lack by buying vegetables with as many of the essential vitamins and minerals a rapidly growing girl would need. Even so, she was about to despair over her inability to find enough calcium when she stumbled across someone selling vitamin supplements. 

Incredibly grateful, she bought out nearly the entire stock, then returned to the hotel room to pack and check out. When she was done she had a few extra minutes, and she debated sitting down and starting her book until she had to leave. Her fingers lingered on the package, aching to unwrap the books and begin turning pages, but she denied the feeling. Every second she was away from Knives and Ace was a second in which she was begging for trouble. Who knew what that man would be trying in her absence?

Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. She didn't know, but she had a pretty good idea, which was why she had taken steps to eliminate a couple of his more likely options. If he was being a good boy he would never know what she had done to him, but if he was being an obstinate, annoying, know-it-all, male, bigoted idiot, well, he had a few surprises coming his way. 

She packed the books and got ready to check out. Hefting the bag, she made sure that it rode well, and left the room. She checked out and made her way out of the city, sauntering out much the way she had sauntered in, unconcerned, hands in her pockets, and no seditious thoughts of escaped plants in her head at all. 


	15. Deep thoughts for a little girl

I don't own Trigun.

If this chapter is rather random, I'm sorry; I'm uber-tired.

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Knives learned that traveling with a small child is onerous. They get tired easily and wish to rest. Their legs are short and they are slow. They have a short attention span and do not wish to do the same thing for hours. They whine and drag their feet and complain and fuss and are a complete bother.

Early in the morning Ace had tried to get Knives to carry her. The look he gave her would have dissuaded a courageous man but she was unfazed. Small arms reached towards him in a silent demand. His response was to grab her hand and drag her along, her legs running to keep up with his longer strides. This lasted for a whole ten minutes before she felt that she could no longer keep up the pace. Her steps grew slower until he was more dragging her through the sand than he was leading her. 

The leaden weight tugging at his arm bothered him. He released her hand and let her drop to the sand. She lay there, panting, as he walked away. She watched him move over the sand dunes and debated following him or going off on her own. She was tired and he couldn't make her walk if she didn't want to.

Then she got an idea. Closing her eyes, she surrendered to the tiredness that was pulling at her limbs. It wasn't fair, she thought as she tried to fall asleep. It was hard enough growing up, growing so fast that her body could barely keep pace. She didn't need to walk over half the planet to suit the whims of some old grown-ups. She was willing to bet that no one had dragged Knives all over miles and miles when he was growing up.

Knives or his brother. Her imagination painted pictures of what his brother would look like. His eyes would probably be cold, too, looking out on the world like it was something distasteful that could be dismissed. He would be tall, tall and lanky, looming over people to cow them, using physical presence to cow others into submission. She couldn't decide if his mouth would look more like a sneer or more pinched, but either one would make him a perfect match for his brother.

She wished that the other plants outside the bulbs could have been nicer. The plants from where she had been born were nice and all, but they just didn't understand what it was like to be outside a bulb. Inside the bulb, all their needs were taken care of, leaving their minds free to think on all sorts of wonderful things. She liked to eavesdrop on some of their conversations, but the bulbed plants weren't much help when she was in trouble. They just didn't know how to cope with the rest of the world. Since they didn't need to deal with her sort of problems, and couldn't conceive a need to, they looked upon her troubles as fancies and flights of imagination. Nothing she could do would make them think otherwise; their lives were too ordered to conceive of chaos. 

So, finally she finds a plant who could maybe understand the hell she went through, and he wasn't the right sort of person. At all. He was mean and cruel and hateful and she didn't like him very much. Everything was supposed to go his way or he would throw a fit. Basically, and this was a concept that she could barely grasp, and was even less able to grapple into words, he never grew up. He expected that the whole world was his toy, and every time it did something contrary to what he wanted he tried to break it to his will.

It was a very immature way of looking at things, thinking that others needed to conform to your expectations. She liked Kiley's idea better, her way of being who she was, and making people change their expectations until she fit. It wasn't that she didn't care what others thought of her, it was just that she was willing to do what she felt was right regardless. She didn't expect that other people would automatically agree with her, but she was willing to let them believe what they wanted as long as they didn't try to get her to change her mind. Then she was willing to do whatever was necessary to protect her right to be who she was.

She wondered why an intelligent being like Knives had such trouble with Kiley's point of view. He was a plant, he was smart, and he still refused to see what was so obvious to her. Humans were people, too; good, bad, and mostly indifferent. Just because they weren't quite as smart, fast, or all-around neat as plants didn't mean that they needed to be gotten rid of. They just had problems growing up. Her mind wandered to the case of Knives. He was _really_ old and he still wasn't very mature. How could he expect the much younger humans to act maturely when he still had problems with it? It just didn't make sense.

Gradually, she grew aware of being held, rocked in arms swaying to a walking gait. Her lips curled in a sleepy smile. She had gotten him to carry her, after all. She knew that he wasn't going to leave her, not when he was so happy to have another plant around. Her smile curled into a small frown as she thought on that last statement.

He was happy to have another plant around, not happy just to have her around. He didn't seem to like her very much; she got the distinct impression that most of the time he was just humoring her. She gathered that he would be happier to not have her around, but to have someone else, someone more biddable who also happened to be a plant. 

She wasn't sure she liked being loved more for what she was than for who she was. It felt…wrong.


	16. A letter to friends

Have I mentioned I don't own Trigun? Only a hundred freakin' times! Gah!!

Heh… This is just a teaser. I repeat, this is just a teaser. More will come later, but it won't be coming for a while.

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Dear Meryl and Mr. Vash,

I hope this letter finds you well. I haven't heard from you for awhile, but I bet you two are still ok, and just working really hard. 

I have had an interesting week. It started when Niles got into the jam and ate so much he threw up. He managed to get sick while still in the kitchen and in a fit of brilliance used the empty jar, which he then closed and put back on the shelf before creeping back to bed. Imagine our surprise when we went to open the jar again!! After getting over our shock, I had to go into the pantry so the children wouldn't see me laugh. They saw the tears on my cheeks when I came back out, and Niles promptly admitted that it was his fault. I'm sure he was expecting something terrible to happen as punishment, but I could hardly bring myself to hurt him after I had laughed so hard. Besides, you can be sure he won't be trying that again, and neither will anyone else. Already the story has taken on an air of legend, passed from those who were there to the unlucky ones who were still upstairs in bed.

Janet is feeling much better then she did last week. I still worry about her; she seems so frail, and gets sick so often. When she feels better she runs and plays like the rest of the children, but when she is ill she loses that ability to be happy. She merely lies in bed sleeping most the time, and the rest of her time is spent staring listlessly around. I wish I knew how to fix things, or at the very least what was wrong with her, but I just can't come up with anything. So I watch her, and worry, and hope that someday she will get better and stay better, and be happy like the rest of my children.

You will not believe who fell into my office on Wednesday. I was sitting at my desk, talking to this odd woman who had come to me for advice, when all of a sudden Mr. Knives was coming through my window. And it was closed at the time! I'm still finding glass in the carpet. But if that wasn't odd enough, he didn't look very healthy. He didn't give me a hard time at all, and even acted like I wasn't there. Instead he got in an argument over the child with the lady, and she got mad and beat him up. Really. He was on the floor and everything and she was kicking him. He actually ended up agreeing with her to make her stop. 

They looked like they knew each other; it was very odd. Your brother wasn't acting like he normally does. Maybe it was because he was hurt, but I'm not certain. Kiley (the lady) had come to me for advice on raising the girl she had brought with her, and she acted like she had no idea how to raise a child. She was being all mysterious and odd, talking around the subject of the child, making me guess that she was a plant.

A plant! Isn't that neat Mr. Vash? The little girl is a plant! You and your brother aren't the only ones anymore. She seemed happy enough to be with the lady and Mr. Knives, or I would have kept her no matter what your brother might have tried. The lady kept talking about how there was trouble after the girl, and how she didn't want to cause trouble, but how much trouble could she be in? You got us in lots of trouble, Mr. Vash, and we were ok. Maybe part of being a plant is being in trouble; I don't know. But the little girl seemed to be alright, so I really didn't have any reason to keep her, other then I don't think your brother should be around small children. But that's just my opinion, and I shouldn't act on my opinion alone, not when it involves someone else's life. 

The lady wasn't very nice, or at least I didn't think so at first. Now I'm not so sure. She was very mean to your brother, hitting him where he had been shot, and kicking him when he was already on the floor and not defending himself at all. She agreed with me when I told her that she wasn't very nice, and seemed a little sad. But after they had left, and when I had gone back to my office to see what I could do about the window, there was something on my desk. It was a note that said "Sorry about the mess. Hope this helps." And underneath it were one thousand double dollars. That's enough money to fix the window, and get enough soil to finish the vegetable garden, too. I was very surprised that anyone who accompanied your brother would think to pay to fix a mess. Not that your brother is irresponsible, but he doesn't seem to care about the messes he makes of people's lives. The company he keeps doesn't always seem to care, either. So to see some sort of reparation, and even more then enough money to fix the trouble that they had caused, well, I'm a little confused now.

I still don't think that the lady is very nice, but I don't think that she's bad, either. I'm not sure what that makes her. Maybe they will visit you guys next, and you can tell me what you think of her. Anyway, I thought that Mr. Vash should know that his brother is traveling about again. I'm not complaining, really I'm not, but Mr. Vash, you had promised me I would never have to see him again. When he came through the window my heart almost leaped out of my chest I was so scared. I got all light headed and not like myself at all. I know he's your brother, but after what he did to me an Meryl, I'd really would be happy to not have to see him ever again. 

Anyway, on Thursday, Annie said…


	17. The silent treatment

I don't own Trigun.

This is the chapter I should have written yesterday. 

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Ace sat in Knives' arms and periodically looked out over the desert. The scenery rarely changed; iles and iles of sand stretched out to all sides. The drab beige sameness sparkled under the twin suns, flecks of quartz catching the suns' rays and reflecting them back to the sky. The air itself seemed to shimmer with the light passing back and forth through it, almost as if it were lit on its own and not merely sharing in the glory. 

And sometimes there were rocks.

Other then that, the scenery was pretty boring. She wouldn't have minded talking with Knives, but she was still mad at him for trying to make her walk. He would have to suffer through walking all this way and not getting to talk to her. If he wasn't such a big butthead she would be nicer, but it seemed like every time she tried to tell him he was being silly he acted like he knew more them she did just because he was old.

She turned and looked at his face. He was looking off into the distance, as if the horizon was more interesting then she was. He didn't look as old as he was, that was sure. Even living on this planet for years and years (and years and years and…) he didn't have any wrinkles. At least, not many. There were a couple by his eyes from squinting into the bright light, but they went away when the suns' set. And there were a few lines by the corners of his mouth, but they were frown lines. She reached out and poked the corners of his mouth up, to see what a smile might look like on his face.

He drew his head back out of her reach and didn't drop it back until her arms once again rested by her sides. He still didn't look at her. She sighed and turned to look out over the sands again.

No rocks.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of his gait. Step, step, step, they made their way quickly across the desert. His longs legs ate up the distance, moving deceptively faster then one might think. It was a funny walk, though. Maybe it was because he was old, but it was really stiff and kinda bouncy. Kiley glided across the ground, moving over it like it was something she touched only because she felt like it. Her feet tapped the ground lightly, staying down only long enough to provide a spring into the next step. Knives placed each foot firmly on the sand. It stayed down there, firmly marking the passing of his presence before he lifted it and moved to the next patch of land that would be graced by his transit. 

His arms rocked side to side slightly as they swayed with the motion of his body. She was nestled between them and could feel the strength they possessed. Even after hours of carrying her, he wasn't straining. Sometimes she could feel the muscles tense and relax beneath her as he worked through kinks, but he never shifted his grip or put her down. It was neat to be able to feel how strong he was, but he never gave her an excuse to cuddle closer. She might have been in his arms, but she didn't feel a sense of closeness. It was only a convenient way of carrying her about, nothing more. 

Kiley might have carried her on her back, but she at least invited a bit of cuddling. She could rest her chin on either shoulder, lean her cheek against the side of her face, bury her nose in her hair, tickle her sides, any number of things that were fun. If she tried to tickle Knives, he would drop her on her head. Or just decide to carry her by one foot or something. 

She opened her eyes and looked around again. Still no rocks.

She closed her eyes again and sighed. She wasn't pouting. Knives was a butthead. But this was _boring_. Not that she was complaining, not really. She didn't want to stay in December; it was dangerous there, for her, and for Knives and Kiley if they tried to keep her away from the bad men. But the rest of the planet was just so boring. It was sand and sand and sand. And sometimes rocks.

She peeked. No rocks.

There wasn't anything green around at all. Whoever had picked this planet to live on was an idiot. Sure, people could live here, but it was boring outside. There should be more to look at then desert. She wasn't entirely certain what those other things should be, outside of some green shrubs and such, but she was sure that there should be more things to look at.

She squirmed a little, until Knives' grip tightened and kept her from moving anymore. He still wasn't holding her close; he was just keeping her from maybe falling on her head. He relaxed his hold when she stopped trying to move. 

Almost, almost she gave up on not talking to him, just to have something to do. She tried to convince herself that he liked the fact that she wasn't speaking, liked that he didn't have to listen to her. Looking at her silence that way, he was probably enjoying every second of it. If she really wanted to torment him, she needed to talk. Luckily, she caught herself before this line of reasoning could lead her to break her vow of silence.

She looked again.

Rocks!

She squirmed again to get a better look. Knives saw them as well. He stopped walking and started to swear. Ace listened, enraptured, to every word he said. She didn't know what a lot of them meant, but she was sure Kiley would know. She tried to keep track of them all, but he sure knew a ton of them, and after a few hundred she was beginning to lose track.

He didn't; he didn't repeat himself once.


	18. Honey, I'm home

Ace looked at Knives, at the rocks, at Knives, and back at the rocks. She couldn't tell why he was so upset. They were just rocks. Well, they were rather cool specimens of rockness, spires of stone stretching into the sky, scattered in a circle. But she saw nothing to swear over. After more then a few minutes of fruitless cursing, he turned to his left a few degrees and started to walk.

Fifteen minutes later she could see the rocks again. So could Knives. He stopped, looked at the suns, turned around, and started to walk again. This happened a couple more times, him changing direction and ending up facing the rocks again. Finally, he snarled something unintelligible and walked towards the spires.

When they got closer, Ace could see that there was a spring in the middle of all the rocks, and a few small, straggly plants growing in an uneven row. Some more of the fernlike growths lined the edges of the spring, huddled close to the source of life, and there were a couple others growing off in the middle of the desert like they had no need of water. 

So this was the oasis. She wondered why Knives had tried to go someplace else. Kiley wouldn't have been able to find them then. Ace didn't know what she had done to make Knives end up here, but one sidelong glance told her that Kiley had better be careful when she arrived. 

Knives was angry.

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Kiley whistled as she walked across the desert. It was a happy, sprightly tune designed to encourage tired and achy feet to walk more. All the supplies for the next however long were nestled snugly on her back, and they were not especially light. The weight forced her to walk on her toes, and her calves were beginning to cramp from slipping in the sand. Not that anyone was going to care, she thought to herself. I get hurt bringing life-sustaining energies in carbon form to them, and what thanks will I get? None. 

Her thoughts continued in the same lightly self-pitying vein as the rocks came into view. She wondered idly if Knives had figured out that she had screwed with his head, or if he had been a good boy and had done what he was told without arguing. Knowing him, she wasn't going to lay odds on him not being mad now.

Ok, no more trips to a casino, she thought. Too many gambling metaphors kept sneaking into her mind. 

As she moved closer she still could not see either of her two little plant friends. The oasis looked deserted, but she knew they were there. She could feel them. Closing her eyes, she surrendered consciousness for a brief trance. He…was…there. Halfway up one of the spires. What the heck was he planning? She released trance and continued her transit across the last hundred yards of sand.

She walked past the circle of stone, visibly unconcerned. Her eyes lingered briefly on the mangled remains of the plants she had grown a while back. Hmm. He must have been pissed.

She felt a gathering of energy at her back and revised that last thought. He still was pissed. 

She could feel the release as he let go of whatever he had planned. Unconcerned, she hardened the air behind her, then scooped it so that whatever hit it would be ricocheted back at him. 

Energy blades of various sizes came at her, some arching around the barrier she had created to hit try to her front. These few she pulled apart, dispersing the component power harmlessly into the air. She dropped the bag of supplies and spun, just in time to stop the ricochets from decapitating Knives. She held the blades suspended in the air before they could cause irreparable damage out of reflex. She had caught them just in time; one had come close enough to cutting his throat that it nicked it when he swallowed, suddenly nervous. He didn't move from his perch on the spire because he couldn't move without slitting his throat; he tried to destroy the blade he had created but couldn't. She had taken control of it when she grabbed it; his efforts to regain control were uncoordinated and easily fended off.

Slowly she stalked over to where he sat. She stood at the base of the rock and looked up, her face expressionless.

"My day's been great; thanks for asking. And how was yours?" she asked conversationally.

"Let me go, vermin. I swear, you shall pay for this," he snarled.

She tapped her lips with one finger, then held it out. "First combat lesson. Don't throw it out unless you can take it back." She cocked her head to one side, inviting a response.

"You are going to die a slow and painful death," he said conversationally. His voice was cold and clearly pitched to frighten.

She laughed. "I already did that. I'm thinking of trying something different next time."

His eyes narrowed to little slits. "You did something to me. You did something to my mind."

She had the grace to look abashed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. Messing with your sense of direction was wrong. But I was right to do it, wasn't I? You were going back to your ship, weren't you?" He didn't respond, but she didn't need him to.

"I think you are more upset that you aren't getting your way right now than you are mad that I messed with your head. Because, think about it. If you had come here all on your own, you would never have known that I sort of took away your other options."

"I hate you," he said calmly.

"Aw, shucks. You and a bunch of other people. See how much I care?" she said, laughing. "You hate me because I won't let you do what you want. Grow up, plant boy," she said, pulling the energy out of the last blade. "Now get down here; I bought you a present."


	19. Bringing gifts

I don't own Trigun. 

I like my reviews. I get big smiles. 

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Knives merely grunted and started down from his perch. He jumped down the last ten feet, probably just to prove to her that he could, that he was more than human. She merely turned to hide a small smile. Sure, he could drop a story and walk away. Bet his feet still stung from the impact, though. Returning to the dropped bag, she began to pull out some of her purchases. He moved a fair distance away from her and crossed his arms before descending into a sulk.

"Where's Ace?" she asked after a few moments.

He jerked his chin up, pointing to the top of one of the spires without having to uncross his arms. Kiley ignored his pouting. She left the bag and walked to the base of the rock he had indicated.

"Hey kid!" she hollered up. Ace's head peaked over the edge. "Get down here! I bought you stuff, and I want to see if it's going to fit!" She watched intently as Ace climbed down, ready to help if necessary but unwilling to interfere. She made her way down without incident, and Kiley breathed a silent sigh of relief, then hoped that she wasn't turning into some sort of mother hen. She was never this protective over the people in her unit; she expected that they would get hurt and learn from the pain. But now? She meets this child and suddenly doesn't want her to ever be hurt again.

Was it a mothering thing? Was it some deep-buried genetic curse that was forcing her to protect the child? Some female instinct that made her ensure the survival of the next generation? Or was it simpler than that? Was it just that, after having finally given up complete control over her heart, she was unwilling to risk anything more? She rather hoped it was the second option. Maybe it was a control thing, but she hated the idea of being a slave to instinct. It was much nicer to think that she was merely…protecting her emotional investment. Yes, that was it. 

She shook her head at the thought. She finally was able to admit to a measure of concern for someone other than herself, and she has to couch it in banking terms. Ah, the measures of the emotionally constipated, she thought to herself wryly. Someday I may even try to diversify my investments. She amused herself with other such babblings as she carefully followed Ace's climb down. 

As soon as the child was within arm's reach, she grabbed her and held her close in a rib-bending hug. No words were exchanged, but they shared a moment of happiness in togetherness before Kiley reluctantly set her on the ground. 

"Come see what I got you," she said, holding her by the hand and leading her to the half-unpacked bag. She pulled out the first outfit, the only one that was made for a girl, and had to laugh at the expression on Ace's face. The look of sheer horror was priceless. Her eyes grew wide and darted nervously from the outfit to the bag and back again. She gave a shaky little smile and took the outfit from Kiley's outstretched hands. Obviously working at composing herself, she looked at the shirt and fingered one of the bows before gingerly laying it on the sand beside her. 

She looked up again and met Kiley's smiling eyes with a cautious look. With a bit of trepidation her gaze shifted to the next outfit that she had pulled out of the bag. Her eyes lit with joy this time as she took in the simple lines and colors of the boy's outfit. Loose dark blue pants fastened with a drawstring were complimented by a dark green shirt. When Ace held it close to her chest to see how long it would be before she could wear it, Kiley was pleased to note that the color brought green highlights to her eyes. 

The rest of the clothes were greeted with about the same degree of pleasure, and a great deal more amusement as the sizes grew well beyond what one would expect she would be needing to use for years yet. The two of them shared more then a moment of laughter over the first outfit as Kiley explained herself. 

"Every little girl needs to be dressed like a doll at some point in their life. I think it's one of those things, like every boy needs to have a dog." She gathered a quizzical look at the last comment. "A dog, you know? A pet?" Seeing no comprehension, she sighed. "Small, generally fuzzy, generally loyal animal that provides affection at the cost of food. Never mind; not important." She shot a look at Knives out of the corner of her eye and saw that he was still pouting. 

"Don't you want to see what I got you?" she asked as her hands went into the bag. He met her eye, his gaze cold as he shrugged noncommittally. 

"Fine," she said, her voice going a little colder. She slipped out the gun she had bought, hand on the grip and barrel pointing to the ground. He tensed upon seeing it and she sighed.

"Here," she said, shifting her grip and passing the gun to Ace by the barrel. The girl took it gingerly, almost as if she expected it to bite her if she held it too hard. Kiley sighed.

"Not like that," she said, moving to sit beside her and showing her the proper grip. "If you try to hold it like that, you'll end up on your butt the first time you pull the trigger."

Ace gave her a big, wide-eyed look that asked her just why she needed one of these. 

"You need to be able to protect yourself, even if no one else is around. You're still a bit small to begin learning basic hand to hand, but you're never to young to learn how to properly shoot a gun. While I'm not planning on leaving you to your own devices, and I'm pretty sure Sulky over there would protect you as well, it's best to not have to depend on others for your own well being."


	20. A long talk

I don't own Trigun.

I'll be off at Sakuracon this weekend, so no updates. You get one bigger chapter, instead. No complaining allowed.

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Knives studiously stared off into the distance, eyes searching the horizon because seeing the horizon didn't bother him. The sight of the two of them, laughing together and having fun bothered him. It was petty, he knew, but that didn't change the sinking feeling in his gut as he watched Ace enjoy Kiley's company. What could the girl be seeing in that female? She was just a vermin, a spider, a nobody who was only waiting to die. He suppressed a cringe as a shot rang out. He wasn't expecting to be shot. Really. Regardless, he leaned a little closer to the rock at his back.

She should not be teaching the girl how to shoot. Women were weaker than men; that's why men were the protectors. As long as he was around, the child had no need to protect herself. It was like they were planning on getting rid of him, on not needing him around. The thought was unacceptable, but try as he might, he couldn't banish it.

He shifted his position a little, his gaze scanning the high clouds that shrouded the sky. Abruptly his mind remembered rain, and storms, and things he had never seen with his own eyes. His scowl deepened. It was a nuisance and a bother, these memories that weren't his own. Even so, the ghost of memory brushed against his skin, flesh that suddenly wished to feel the soft touch of rain. He shook himself, rubbing his hands on arms gone prickly with gooseflesh, and gave off staring at the sky.

He resumed staring off across the sand again, and started to wonder when he would see his brother again. It was only a matter of time before he tried to find him; he had promised to never bother his two pets again, and had rather broken that promise, along with a window. For that matter, he had vowed to stay in the ship until after they died, but that was a minor detail. As long as he wasn't causing trouble for his friends, Vash didn't really care what he did. 

Well, no, he cared, but he didn't try to stop him until it became personal. And it was, now. He was going to wonder why he had broken his promise, and he would pick up his gun again, and don his body armor, and come after him. And Knives had no clue what he was going to say. 

"Hey, sorry, Vash. I was minding my own business, and all of a sudden, there was a human in my ship. Yeah, that one over there. She escaped, and I followed her, and things just went downhill from there." He sighed. That wasn't going to work. It was the truth, but it was unbelievable, even to him. Vash was a pacifist goofball, but he wasn't stupid. He just hoped that he had enough time to come up with a believable lie.

The best thing to do would be kill her right now. If he brought the child home with him, he would not be bored anymore, or at least not for a good long while. Raising her the right way would be a challenge, and he could spend his spare time researching the possibilities that she had opened up to him. And he could keep Vash out of the ship. Probably. Damn. That idea wouldn't work.

He turned and looked at them and sighed again. Besides, he was beginning to get the impression that killing that woman would not be as easy as he had first thought. She was not the typical vermin, that was certain. Most of them quivered in fear when he came near, falling all over themselves to please him, to try to extend their worthless lives. The strong might try to defy him, but they died so easily, their strength only weakness when compared to him.

And then there was her. There was little about her to hint at the strength that lay beneath her skin. He watched the play of muscles under her skin as she tugged and pulled at Ace's limbs, moving them into the proper position. She was too skinny, skin stretched too tight over her body, as if it were trying to strangle the muscles beneath until only bones were left. And yet she had carried that heavy pack from December to here, and had enough energy left to fight him and play with Ace.

Her mind should be equally fragile. After living through the hell she had, there was no viable explanation for the inner strength that she showed. And yet, she met all his challenges and tests with the same unflappable calm. The only real reaction to his prodding he got was after she had killed that man, and then she claimed to be only annoyed. Annoyed? Was that all he got for his hard work? He had finally managed to annoy her? She had managed to annoy him from the first moment he saw her; it seemed hardly fair that he couldn't return the favor more often.

And…the child liked her better. He could see it, and he could feel it. Even while he carried the child, he could feel a distance between them. She kept herself from him, in a way that she didn't with the woman. He watched them, saw the child crawl all over the woman, obviously taking pleasure in their nearness. She had held herself taut in his arms, not relaxing enough to even feel close to him.

It wasn't fair. Why did she like the vermin more? Everyone always liked the vermin more. He cut that train of thought short before he could get any more depressed. His eyes closed as the pain of looking at them grew beyond what he wished to bear. Fine. Let them have their fun. He didn't care; he didn't need to be liked. It was weak of him to even be bothered by such thoughts, and he tried chasing them out of his head. He met with limited success before being attacked at the knees. 

His arms wind milled out to the sides as he tried to keep from falling. His eyes flew open and met the clear blue ones of Ace. Her gaze was open and pleading, and his scowl disappeared under the entreaty in her eyes. Short arms reached out to him, begging for a hug, and despite his intentions, he complied. He lifted her up, loving the feel of small arms clinging to his neck. A soft kiss on his cheek both surprised and embarrassed him. He could feel the blush as it spread across his cheeks, and his eyes saw the bemused expression on the woman's face.

"What?" he demanded testily. 

"Nothing," she denied, but her mouth quirked in a half-smile that belied her protest.

"You're thinking something," he demanded.

"Only that you two look sweet," she explained, hands up in a warding gesture. "Be careful; you almost look nice."

He rolled his eyes and she laughed. "Want your present now?"

Cautious, he nodded. If she brought the child a gun, he was leery of what she might have bought him. His eyes widened as he saw what she had purchased.

A shirt. Why in the world would she have bought him a shirt? Ace squirmed and he let her down, then went down on one knee to look at his gift a little more closely. His fingertips moved softly over the fabric, and he was surprised at the quality of the cloth and the closeness of the weave. Almost he worried that his fingers were too rough, that they would snag the fabric, but as he picked the shirt up he realized that would not be a problem. It was a very nice piece of clothing, of much greater quality then the things he normally could find to wear. The color was nice as well, a deep blue that appeared to have been dyed in the cotton before the fibers were even twisted.

His eyes drifted towards hers, and he was surprised to see a shadow of concern in them. She actually cared about his response? He toyed with the idea of pretending that he didn't like it, but discarded it almost instantly. They were going to be living together, after all. It might be a good idea to not antagonize her unnecessarily. And… he might not get another nice present.

He let his face relax into a smile and saw an answering one light in her eyes. "It is a very nice gift," he said as he gathered it into his hands. Turning slightly, he pulled off the one he was wearing and dressed. 

"Happy?" he asked, and she nodded. It was a peace offering, of sorts. He sat down by her in the sand. "How should we do this?" he asked. 

"Do what?" she returned.

"Do this being together thing. It seems like you aren't going to allow me to take the child away." She snorted, he continued. "And for some strange reason you feel bound to let the child have her own way. So, we are going to be…together…for awhile. How do you plan on handling this?"

She shrugged. "Same way I handle everything. I'll take it as it comes."

He shook his head. "That's not what I meant. What are you going to do about sharing her with me?"

She looked at him oddly. "I don't have a problem sharing. I don't have a problem with you being here. I don't have much in the way of problems at all, except I'm expecting that you will be your normal annoying self and try to cause trouble."

He waved that away. "You are saying that you are willing to overlook what I've put you through?"

"I've overlooked a lot of things in my life," she said sadly. "It's a talent honed with much use. I'll be fine; better if you stop playing these little games, but I'll be fine."

"What little games?"

"The little, what-can-she-do games. The little tests you're so fond of. Pushing at me to see if I'm going to break. Your games."

He grunted. "I suppose I'll learn a bit just by watching you," he offered. 

She sighed. "Why does everything need to be a competition with you? I'm not a threat, or an ally, or a potential lackey, or whatever is running through your head. I'm just trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. Stopping your grand design to destroy humanity sounds like a plausible life's goal, but I'm flexible. Maybe I'll be a baker instead."

Knives looked at her wondering what her babbling signified. She smiled, a sad excuse for mirth. "Don't mind me; I'm just a little depressed at the moment. It's a normal reaction for me after a life or death situation. Next I'll get morose, then I'll get over it. It's all part and parcel of my messed up psyche; I'll kill to stay alive, but am always a bit disappointed that I'm not dead." She shook her head. "Not like you care. I'm sure you're more then willing to permanently cure my disappointment."

He smiled. "You act like you know me so well," he said. 

"You have yet to really surprise me," she shot back, but without any heat behind the words. 

"Really?" he asked.

She nodded. 

"Explain."

She shook her head. "I don't really feel like it. Let's just leave it at I've seen your type before."

"What type is that," he persisted. 

"Racist. Sexist. Elitist. Convinced of your utter superiority over every other living being."

"I am not sexist."

"Sure you aren't. I saw the look you gave us when I started teaching Ace this afternoon. And every single time we get around other people, you always dismiss the women as beneath your notice."

"I do not," he protested.

"Oh, yes you do. Quit lying to yourself. You look at me, and instantly you begin to wonder why I'm causing you so much trouble. You forget that I'm an assassin, you forget that I'm a combat veteran from a war whose scope and atrocities you could only begin to imagine, you forget that I know more tricks than you do, and you forget that I have more experience using them than you do. You look at me, you see a woman, and suddenly you think I'm a lot less dangerous than I am. If I were a man, you'd never forget to take me seriously. If I were a man, you wouldn't keep testing me, keep trying to see if you can get a reaction from me."

"If you were a man I would have probably killed you by now," he offered.

She snorted. "Or died trying. See? You automatically dismiss me as a threat because I'm female. It's sexist."

"Fine. I'm sexist. So what?"

"So what nothing. I was just pointing it out."

They fell silent for a moment.

"You obviously don't make many friends," commented Knives.

"Look who's talking," she laughed. A moment later she said, "No, not many friends. Not many people like assassins. Especially not emotionally constipated ones."

"I thought there was a period of time where people didn't know you were an assassin."

"There was, but I did. It's hard to make friends when you know that people would hate you if they found out the truth about you."

Silence fell again. 

"You whine a lot, don't you?" he said.

Her head shot up. "I do not whine," she said, indignant.

"Yes you do. All the time. Do you think anyone on this planet cares what you did in your past life? And that's if you could find someone to believe you. But no, you carry this burden of guilt around with you everywhere you go, and you shove it in everyone's face so they will pity you."

She sputtered, but Knives continued over her incoherent protests. "You think that you are so evil. You feel the need to be punished, but your guilt is not enough for you, so you enlist others to punish you as well. You carry the weight of their condemnation and bask beneath their hatred."

"I do not!"

"Yes you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't talk about it so damn much. Well, guess what? No one here cares. Ace likes you, and I really could care less how many people you have killed. So now you are just going to have to live with only your own guilt."

"Live with it? I do nothing but live with it." She held up a hand. "I look at myself, and I see blood dripping from my hands. The blood of so many people, so many dead. I hate it; you're right. I hate myself, no big surprise there. I hate my past, I hate the decisions I made, and you're right. I do think that I deserve the condemnation of everyone I meet. I do. I live in a hell of my own creation."

He grabbed her hand with one of his own and leaned in close. "Listen to me. You are not alone in having the blood of others on your hands. Lots of people have killed; most of them learn to live with it."

"Not as many as I have," she protested.

"So the crime is so horrible not because you killed, but because you killed so many?"

"Yes! No. Dammit, stop being confusing. You aren't one to talk. Between us, we've killed enough to stain the sand red. You have no right to judge me."

"If I don't who does?"

"Someone other then a psychopath," she shot back.

"Who other then a psychopath could truly understand what you have done?" he asked, leaning in even closer, until their eyes were mere inches apart.

Words fled the both of them as their eyes locked. A second felt like an hour, and they slowly trickled by as they both stared, entranced.


	21. Infinity

Yasuhiro Nightow owns Trigun, and I'm glad. I love these guys, but he does a much better job with them then I ever could.

What's up with the message board? I don't have a problem with it, but I think fanfic might…

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The moment defied time, defied the concept of time as a linear progression of experience. As it unfolded, Kiley could have sworn that she could feel each separate molecule of air as the breeze brushed past her cheek. She could hear the passage of individual cells of blood as they traveled by her eardrums, the soft ticking swelling and fading with the glacial pumping of her heart. She fancied that she could feel the light as it hit her skin, the wave caressing her with its energy. The world pressed in upon her, filling her entire being with light and energy. Everything seemed possible, even flight did she so desire. Scents assailed her; bits and pieces of the world being drawn into her with every breath, depositing a fraction within her and becoming one with her. The dry flavor of the sand, hot and baked daily by the suns, but still retaining a portion of the frigid desert nights. The strong scent of stone that stood tall in the face of the elements, reflecting back everything that moved against it. The softer scent of the man before her, smelling sweetly of feathers and slightly of spice. She tried to inhale more of this last scent, but what came to her was beyond her control. The world worked its way through her without any chance for her to respond. 

She could read the secrets of the skies, the silent presence of atmosphere held nothing back from her. She could discern the faint patterns of disturbance created by the suns, and even by the energy radiated from the faraway stars. The day hid nothing of the night from her; she could sense the pulsating wonders of the universe with a clarity unmatched in even the darkest of nights. It was the shadow that defined the light, the black relief on which life was painted. Even here, on this desert planet, she could feel the slow pulse of life, the silent strength that was spread across the universe. The fragility of life is legendary, but even so it carves a place for itself everywhere possible. She felt tapped into the same stubborn determination that held life in places that could hardly support it. It tingled across her skin, lingering in her pores, tantalizing her with the promise of more. She could see the slow trickle of sand as it was carried in the breeze, slowly tumbling before the passage of the currents in the air. The pattern that they painted seemed to tell her the secrets of the universe, did she only care to pay attention.

She did not. For all that her senses were collecting a surfeit of information, her mind concentrated solely on the man before her. Her eyes were locked into his, searching for something she could not see. Hesitation. Slowly, slowly they drew nearer each other, each looking intently for the slightest hint of balking, of a chance to pull away, to pretend that nothing was about to happen. But neither did. And as time stretched onward, and more and more sensations assailed her, trying to distract her with promises of understanding and forgetfulness, her eyes did not waver from his. Ironically, she was reminded of the paradox of space, and how one can move halfway towards a destination forever and never reach it, but be infinitely halving the distance. She could see the space stretching before her, never to be fully traversed, always to be traveled. 

A far off part of her scoffed at what was happening. He wasn't going to stand to kiss her, not a man like him. He didn't even like her; he wanted to kill her. He wished to use her and use her up. Racist, sexist, elitist, her mind held on to these definitions like a life line that would save her from him. The possibility of his lips touching hers was infinitesimal, incalculable, unfathomable. The only reason she even persisted in this course of action was to deny him the pleasure of seeing her back down. She wasn't going to quail from the thought of kissing him. A kiss is just a kiss, right? Even did the impossible happen, nothing would change, aside from both of them acknowledging that they had made a silly mistake. 

Torn between the sublime and the surreal, her mind still focused on the eyes before her. Surely, he must be ready to give up now. Any moment now…

Then their lips touched.

If she had thought that her senses were overloaded before, it was nothing to what she experienced now. The same part of her that had been connected to the universe suddenly focused on Knives. The scent of him filled her and made her light headed. It was soft, and incredibly sweet, but harsh as well. Her mind kept trying to liken it to down, but she denied it the easy classification. It was more, much more, stronger not in concentration, but in compilation, layers and layers of pieces that she ached to classify. 

The press of his lips against hers was soft, incredibly smooth and firm. Like thick silk pressed against her skin, she luxuriated in the sensation. It was like nothing she had felt before, like the meeting of their lips closed a circuit that allowed energy to begin to flow. She began to warm to the sensation, opening her mouth a little and sending her tongue out to caress his lower lip.

The taste of him exploded in her mouth, spicy and wonderful. The electricity grew exponentially as she attempted to absorb more of the flavor. Nothing in her life had tasted this good. Instantly she craved more, a craving that began in her stomach and moved through her in waves timed with her pulse. Her knees grew weak, making her glad that she was already on the ground, but her spine straightened and the hesitant meeting of lips was supported by her entire body. She clenched the hand of the arm he still held, then twisted her wrist until she grabbed his hand. 

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Worth the wait? If it was or wasn't, this is only the first part. Oh, and be nice. This is actually the first time I've ever tried to write something romantic. So if it sucks, no flames. 


	22. And beyond

The kiss you've all been waiting for, part two.

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Knives stared at the vermin. Her eyes were clear, hiding nothing, but giving nothing away. Tension stretched between them and he knew that she was feeling much the same as he was. The moment demanded a kiss. He didn't really want to kiss her, didn't want to sully his lips on the filth of hers, but he'd much rather suffer that than have her see him turn away. He was still more than a little upset at how she had reacted upon seeing him unclothed. The memory tried to bring a blush to his face again, but he fought the impulse down. She did not deserve the satisfaction she would derive from his embarrassment. He ignored the small voice that tried to tell him that it was his fault for answering the door naked. She should have waited for him to be done at his leisure, and not have forced a superior being to hurry his ablutions. Her eyes should not have lingered on any part of him, sullying his perfection with her vulgar nature. The thought of kissing her turned his stomach, but he was sure that the action would never be realized. She was a coward when it came to her heart, her tough words a mask for her inability to interact with others. Any minute now, she would back away, avert her eyes and blush, and he would merely smile at her, a superior little smile, the one he was so good at bestowing on the vermin.

Surely this moment had passed by now. He wondered what was taking so long, what could possibly be drawing this out through so many minutes. He was slightly aware of the world around them, but so much of his attention was taken up by the sheer effort of not flinching away from her horrid presence that he failed to realize that time had slowed beyond a crawl. All he felt was revulsion, and determination to face this fresh horror unflinching. Surely, surely she would break first. It was in the nature of the vermin to be weak. Dammit, why wasn't she being weak yet? He was not going to break first. 

He waited for her to lose her nerve, to back off, to let the feeling pass without acting on it, but such was not to be. Suddenly, her lips were pressed against his, a soft presence that surprised and shocked. Instead of concentrating on avoiding her, he was surrounded by her. His senses were assailed by the very being of her and his mind shook under the assault. There was a scent to her, a rich smell like fresh-turned earth, rich loam and growing things. It was heady to a man raised in the cold environment of space, and stranded on a planet that was mostly covered with sand. He could hardly breathe enough of it, his being drowning in the very scent of life that surrounded her. A part of him craved this scent, a part he hadn't known was being denied until this very moment. 

Amazingly, he found that he didn't want to move his mouth away from hers. The press of her mouth on his defied his every expectation. Instead of feeling defiled, he felt invigorated, enlightened, and energized. It was as if this connection opened a previously unknown ability to tap into the energies of the universe, and that these newfound energies poured through him, and through her, through them both, connecting them and merging pieces of them. When all reason would have thought such a thing horrible, experience taught that it was wonderful. Together they were greater then they were apart. He leaned in closer, as if physical closeness could enhance the experience.

Her tongue lapped at his lower lip, the soft caress melting his bones. He was glad to be sitting on the sand, or else he would have gone sprawling. As it was, his grip on her wrist relaxed. He felt her moving out of his grasp but could not find the fortitude to hold her tightly. He was surprised to feel her fingers slid through his, but he gripped them eagerly, as if their hands were a lifeline holding them to this world.

He opened his mouth as well, aching for a taste of her. Slowly he dragged his tongue on her lip, mimicking the action she had just taken, and was rewarded by feeling her shudder under his subtle caress. She was sweet, so sweet that he grew ever more intoxicated. Nothing in his life had ever tasted this good. Aching for more, he slipped inside her mouth, searching for the source of the delight. Yes, it was even better here. She yielded to his presence, accepting him and welcoming him. The energy he felt was matched to his pulse, growing with every beat. He felt it settling within him, filling his body, tingling through him, settling in his stomach and below. He craved her, craved the feel of her, the scent of her, the taste of her. His entire being was focused on absorbing more of her. She seemed to feel the same, if the pressure of her hand in his and the movements of her mouth against him were any indication. 

Almost, almost he lost himself in her, but pain brought him back to reason. Her fingernails were driven into the back of his hand hard enough to draw blood, but the pain focused his mind and allowed him to pull back from the precipice of surrender that his search for sensation had led him to. With an almost physical feeling of separation he tore his lips from hers. His eyes sought out hers, and he wondered if the panic he felt was as obvious in his expression as what he saw on her face. 

"Is it always like that?" he gasped.

Her eyes widened further. "It's never been like that," she responded, equally out of breath. "What the hell just happened?"


	23. What just happened?

Ok, word-wise, a little short. But I liked where it ended. Deal.

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"How should I know?" he asked, panicked.

"You're the plant." she pointed out.

"You're the one who's kissed before."

"Why should that make a difference?" 

"So that isn't normal?"

"Hell, no, that isn't normal!" 

"How am I supposed to know that?"

"Have you ever seen people kiss before? That is so not a normal kiss."

"I could care less how vermin copulate. I try to not pay attention."

She repressed the impulse to roll her eyes. "Trust me; that was not even remotely normal. I've kissed hundreds of times, and it was never like that."

"Oh?"

"No. Never that good."

He smiled slyly, the humor in his eyes barely masking the terror that lurked in their depths. "So…I'm a good kisser?"

She rolled her eyes, not even bothering trying to control the impulse. "I think there was a little more to it than that." His face fell a little. "I'm not saying you were bad," she rushed to assure him. "But seriously, have you ever lost control like that?"

He shook his head, averting his eyes slightly.

She continued. "I felt this need to…devour you. And I couldn't stop myself. I'm not even sure that I want, wanted to. All I could do was squeeze your hand and hope that you could stop us."

He squeezed hers as a reminder, then realized that he still held her hand and dropped it like her touch burned him.

"You did more then squeeze it," he said, looking at the slow seep of blood left over from the press of her fingernails. She flushed but didn't look away. 

"I'm sorry. I couldn't think of anything else to do." Her hands reached out to take his and heal her unintentionally inflicted wounds, but she curled her fingers into fists before touching him. She wasn't willing to tempt fate quite yet. She dropped them into her lap instead, fingers fidgeting with the need to do something, anything. Her heart still raced, and she felt a fresh flush creep up her neck. Blushing? Her? She hadn't flushed with anything other than anger since her stepfather had gotten his hands on her. 

"I can't believe I kissed you," said Knives flatly. Her eyes sought out his and she flinched from the disgust she saw there. 

"More like you can't believe you liked it," she muttered.

He glared. "Like it? Like being that close to one of your kind? Don't make me laugh," he ground out, then looked down at his hand. He seemed entranced by the marks her nails had made. "How could something so disgusting feel so good?"

She shrugged. "Nice to know I'm disgusting," she said morosely. 

He clenched his hand into a fist, then looked at her. "If you haven't figured that out yet, you haven't been paying attention."

She chuckled, a dry sound that held little mirth. "Well, after the singularly most wonderful kiss of my life, I guess I never pictured the guy turning to me after and telling me I disgust him. Don't know why I expected anything else, though. Guess I'm just a romantic." She got up and brushed sand from her rear, her eyes averted. 

The feeling of his hand on her ankle didn't register for a moment. When it did, she looked at him quizzically. 

"No running. Not until we figure this out."

"Figure what out, Knives? That we kissed? Not forgetting that anytime soon. That is was damn good? What's to think about?"

"How could kissing you be so sublime?"

Her jaw clenched. "You probably shouldn't follow up on that statement."

"What?" He looked a little confused. "I only meant…"

"What you meant and what you said are two entirely different things," she said, surrendering to the inevitable and reseating herself. "And I don't know. I don't know what just happened, and regardless of what you might believe, I generally don't go around kissing obnoxious fools."

"No one made you kiss me."

"No one made you kiss me, either."

"I wasn't backing down," he explained. 

"Well, neither was I. That still doesn't explain anything."

They fell silent for a moment.

"I still want to kiss you," he said very softly, not looking at her.

"Same here."

"It wouldn't be a good idea."

"No. No, I can't say it would be."

"Doesn't change things, does it?"

"Nope."

Silence fell again.

"Now what?" he asked.

"What what?"

"Now what do we do?"

"Well, not kissing would be a good start."

"Yes. I'm willing to give that a try if you are."

"I'm not."

"Damn. Neither am I."

"But I'm not going to kiss you, either."

"Why not?" he asked, eyes slightly hurt.

"One of us has to have some modicum of self-control. For all that was a wonderful experience, it was wrong, too much. I'm not going to lose control I can't lose control."

"So even if we both want to? Kiss, I mean?"

"Do you want to?"

"Hell yes."

"Really? Sully yourself with a human?"

He shook himself. "You're right. How could I even contemplate such a thing?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Damn, that was a good kiss. Totally screwed up and complicates life unnecessarily, but…"

A slow smile crept across his face. "I am a good kisser."

"Hmm."


	24. Confusion

*yawns* The author is tired. Man, recovering from a weekend of no sleep is haaaaaard.

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As the euphoria induced by the kiss began to fade, fear crept up over Knives. Fear, and confusion. How the hell could something like this happen to him? How could he go from despising the vermin to craving her in one single instant? Even now that the energy that had invigorated him had mostly faded, there was still a portion of him that craved her touch. 

He found himself absently rubbing at the marks on the back of his hand and deliberately stopped himself, only to find himself doing it again a moment later. Very carefully he didn't look at her, didn't stare at her, didn't watch her, but still he knew exactly what she was doing. After their aborted attempt at a conversation she had looked wildly around for Ace, only to find the girl looking unconcernedly at her new clothes. For all that the experience had seemed so long, only a couple minutes had elapsed. She had gone off to question the girl, but she had sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Or if she had, she wasn't letting on. Then she had gone off and sat at the imaginary edge of the oasis, leaning next to one of the rock pillars and staring off into the sand.

No, whatever had just happened, it was between the two of them, alone. He would have given a lot to know what she was thinking just then, but the whatever it was hadn't left him with any fresh ability to see into her mind. If anything, her barriers were even stronger now then they had been before, like she was being even more careful to not let anything slip around him. No, he had to muddle through this like any…human, he thought with fresh distaste. 

How the hell did she do this to him? One day, he was fine, minding his own business. All right, so he was a little bored and slightly pissed off, but that was normal. He had merely underestimated his brother a few times. The next time was going to be different; the next time he was going to win. Most of his time and energies had been spent making sure of that single fact. Then she just…shows up, and somehow he lost control of his life. 

But he was the type of person who never lost control. He might lose his temper, but he was always in control of the situation. The only person who had ever wrested control from him had been his brother, and as much as that galled him, at least he had been bested by another plant. Now she came along, and he lost control again. At least she didn't seem to know what was going on either, but that was cold comfort. 

Comfort. He fought the impulse to go over to her and slip his arm around her shoulders. Comfort her? The vermin who had started all this mess by not backing down? Surely she was driving him mad. It was the only explanation. He casually glanced over in her direction, making sure that she was still there. 

She looked so small and sad, sitting there alone. Her shoulders were slumped and she leaned against the spire as if its support was all that saved her from sprawling in the sand. He pushed down the urge to cradle her against him, to coax away the blues that were defeating her. She had spent a good deal of time and effort convincing him that she was strong enough to look after herself. He wasn't going to defeat her purpose by running over there and acting completely unnaturally. However natural the act might feel now.

He tried to argue himself out of his feelings. It wasn't but a few days ago that she had shot him, for crying out loud. She was rude, obnoxious, aggravating, entirely too full of herself, and a pain in the ass. His hand rested on his leg where she had shot him as he tried to regain some of his hate. Instead, he found himself massaging the new skin, trying to find some last vestige of pain to fuel his anger and finding nothing. She might be quick to anger and quicker to cause pain, but she did a good job of fixing things after her temper tantrums. Not that this made things better, but he grudgingly had to respect her willingness to try to pick up after herself.

Respect a vermin? He was mad.

Idly, he walked over to her bag and began to look through the food. Somehow, that kiss had made him hungry. And if nothing she had already taken out of her bag had been quite what he wanted to eat, well, maybe there was something in there that would. He pulled out some more clothes, then some books. Idly, he looked at the names on the spines. Fiction, fiction, oh, he had actually liked that one, fiction…what the hell?

He opened the one that had caught his attention and began to read, absorbed in the subject matter despite himself. Oh, the humans could be funny. As he flipped through the pages he chuckled to himself. That was so wrong…that too. That was almost right, but was just wrong enough to be completely hilarious. That one was so wrong it was frightening, but that one was right. 

His chuckles became short barks of laughter. Kiley heard him, and her head turned languidly, then she moved faster as she realized what he was doing.

"Just what gave you the right to go through my bag?" she demanded as she rushed over. Knives laughed and hid the book behind his back, keeping it from her grasping hands. 

"I didn't know you had such a great sense of humor," he commented as he danced away from her. 


	25. Despondancy

Yup. This one is late. Gomen. I have been rediscovering sleep.

Kiley stalked away, then sagged. Where can you go when all you want to do is run away from yourself? She reached one of the boundary stones and rested her hand against it. It felt solid, felt real. She slowly moved her fingers, seeking to understand how everything around her could seem so real when she felt like a ghost. It was as if all of her reality was bound in that kiss, and she was left empty now, feeling the wind blow through her.

Not that feeling like a ghost should be much of a stretch for her. She was one, after all. The collected memories of a failure, placed here on this world for no reason she could fathom. She closed her eyes against the glare and rested her head on the rock. She didn't belong here. She didn't belong anywhere. Why did she feel like she needed to stop Knives from doing whatever he had planned? Why did she feel the need to protect Ace? She didn't belong here; she didn't belong anywhere. If she disappeared now, no one would care. Life on this planet would go on as it always does, missing her not one whit. Well, maybe Ace would care, but she's young. It would be easy for her to get over it. She waited, waited for the last vestiges of her self to blow away in the wind, to take what was left of her heart and spread it thin enough for it to disappear. 

Sighing, she sunk to the ground, no longer able to stand. Her hand trailed down the side of the spire, skin sloughing off under the abrasion, but she didn't care. She barely felt the pain, barely felt the slow seep of blood from the roughened tips. All she had ever wanted was to be loved. Her lips ached with the memory of that kiss, but she forced the feeling away. She didn't deserve to feel that good. 

And why Knives? Her mind raced, wondering what she had done to deserve such a thing. Try as she might, she could never forget what Dream Dancer had told her. Love the first person she saw? She sighed. It wasn't such a farfetched notion as she had once thought. Loving him would be easy. The hard part would be being loved in return. Maybe she should have been more specific in her hopes, but she hadn't known that they were going to be a contract, that she was going to be held to the few words she could affix to the desires in her soul. To know love. She knew it now. And knowing it, she wanted it even more than she had when it was an impossible hope. But it seemed as far out her reach now as it had back on earth. 

Was it such an impossible dream? To be able to love someone and be loved in return? A litany of her faults ran through her mind. Disgusting. Stubborn. Bitchy. Temper. Independent. Skinny. Ugly. Emotionally constipated. Rude. Obnoxious. Doesn't play well with others. Mean.

Oh, yes. Mustn't forget mean. She was very good at ignoring the niceties of life, when she needed to. Manners? Politeness? A modicum of feeling for her fellow man? If it got in the way of expediency, she would ignore all such things. Someone annoys her? Shoot him. Mad? Just get violent. That's a great way to solve problems. But what was she supposed to do? Talk through things? She had never been that good with words. Besides, who ever listens? No one cares, not about her. Talking never got her anywhere.

"Heh," she laughed, then cut it off before it could turn into a sob. Life sucked. She had been a fool to think that things could be different. Love wasn't for people like her. She was strong enough to live without it, and the gods recognized that. It just wasn't her fate, that's all. Dreams, wishes, hopes…they mean nothing. All you have to do is face every day and go on, one foot in front of the other, day after day after day until she finally dies again.

She sniffed, willing the tears that had collected in her eyes to not fall. She didn't cry. She was tough, and strong, and she could do anything she put her mind to. Impossible feats were her trademark. So what if she wasn't loved? She was respected. Had been respected. But that hadn't stopped them from betraying her in the end. 

She felt a tear trickle down her cheek, and dashed it away angrily. Damn, she was getting soft, she thought angrily, but even the anger was short lived, flashing through her in a moment, and leaving nothing behind. A weak fool. That was her. It always had been. Strength was only an illusion, a front that she put up to keep people from attacking her weak heart. 

Love. Why did something so wonderful have to hurt so much? Inside she bled, waves of pain pulsing in time with the beat of her broken heart. 

That's it, she thought. I've been strong long enough. It isn't worth it. Nothing is worth this. I'll pack my things and go, find someplace I can disappear, somewhere I can drift into obscurity and maybe, finally, I might find the peace of the grave. It's the only peace someone like me can count on. 

She sat for a moment, ruminating on her decision, gathering the energy to rise and leave. Turning her head, she saw Knives looking through her things. His laughter rang out across the oasis. The disregard for her privacy angered her, and she found the energy to rush over to where he sat. 

"Just what gave you the right to go through my bag?" she demanded.

"I didn't know you had such a great sense of humor," he said as he kept the book away from her. A quick glance at the books on the sand told her that he had been reading the book on plants. 

"Give that back," she ordered, grasping for it, almost getting it before he pulled it from her fingers. The friction pained the raw areas and she hissed, her angry eyes seeking his.


	26. Scuffle in the sand

Sorry about the slightly sporadic updates lately. I was rediscovering what eight hours of sleep feels like.

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"Why should I give it back?" asked Knives, glancing at the book again. "It's too funny. See this here," he asked, opening the book and pointing out a random passage. "It is completely wrong." He looked at it; it was a diagram of how to connect the power siphon to the plants. "Ew," he said, hastily lifting his finger from the page and closing the book with a snap. "Maybe that part was technically correct, but it is just so wrong on so many levels."

He glanced back at Kiley, then really looked at her. Her eyes were downcast, looking at the sand, but there were traces of tears on her face.

"Are you crying?" he asked, his voice still not serious.

"No." Pause. "Not on purpose."

"You're crying on accident?" His voice was laced with sarcasm.

Sniff. "Something like that."

"Girl, why are you crying?" he asked, mimicking one of the books she had bought.

"Don't," she said, then lifted her chin and glared at him.

"Don't what?" he asked, snaking a hand out and grasping her chin.

"Don't mock a classic."

"That drivel? Living forever as a child in a child's playland. It's not worth the time it takes to read it," he responded, turning her head to one side and then the other as he looked at the tracks of her tears.

"Living forever is a big stretch, isn't it?" she ground out through clenched teeth. 

"You don't get to stay a child forever. Most people don't even manage to stay young throughout their childhood."

"Yeah, sucks, doesn't it? Still one of my favorite books, though."

"You should not have brought her such crap. Dreams are a luxury we can hardly afford."

"Dreams suck," she agreed, hating the tear that slipped from her eye. Knives caught it on his thumb, then raised the moisture to his lips. 

"I love the taste of pain," he commented.

"Oh, that's nice," she said sarcastically. "I love the taste of pain. Original," she said as she jerked her chin towards the ground. 

Knives shrugged. "I don't feel the need to be very original around you. You aren't worth the trouble." A slow smile crept across his face as he watched her shoulders slump fractionally. He grabbed one of her hands and raised her fingers to his lips, then slowly licked the blood away.

Her startled eyes met his. "What the hell are you doing?" she demanded. "That is so disgusting."

"This is salty, too," he commented, his grip on her wrist tightening as she tried to get away. "You do taste nice."

"Let go of me." The tears in her eyes dried in the anger of her glare. Knives' smile widened and he dropped her hand. 

"That's better. No more crying now, hmm?"

She slapped him. "That is no way to treat someone."

He kept his head turned to the side, smile still firmly in place. "I find it amusing that after all this time, you still insist that you are someone."

She sighed. "I find it annoying that after all these weeks you still insist that I'm not."

Knives stepped back and looked at her, his gaze traveling from her feet to her face and back. Without warning, he stepped forward and stiff-armed her in the chest. 

Or, at least he tried to. She saw him coming, grabbed his wrist and elbow, and threw him to the sand near her bag. He made a satisfying sound as he hit the ground.

"What the hell was that for?" she asked as he shook sand out of his hair.

He looked up at her, grinned, and said nothing. His hands drifted through the sand, and a handful was sent towards her eyes. She backed up a step and turned her head to avoid the spray. He caught the trailing foot, yanked, and brought her down while she was unbalanced. Another handful of sand was rubbed in her hair, abrading her scalp. He placed on hand on her shoulder to hold her down, but without much success. She…rippled, somehow, and threw him off. 

She attacked in the same spirit, grabbing sand and dumping it down the front of his pants. He tried to mimic her wriggle, with limited success. He did manage to stop her nefarious plan, but he could not throw her off as well. She switched tactics and rubbed sand in his hair, then jumped off.

He smiled again as she eyed him warily. He could see the suspicion on her face as she tried to figure out what he was doing, and what he was planning. He slowly stood up, hips shifting as her tried to move some of the sand from where she had left it. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair, grimacing slightly as he dislodged some of the sand that had gotten stuck. Getting stuff out of his hair was always such a pain. He sighed, then launched himself at her again. 

He caught her at her waist, even though she tried to twist out of the way. They both ended up on the sand, him on top of her. He stayed there, slowly creeping up her body as she tried to get away. He stopped when he had his knees on her hips and his hands on her shoulders. He leaned down close until his nose was inches from hers.

She was still fighting to buck him off of her, but spared a moment to glare at him. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Nothing," he said, moving his lips closer. The breath from his voice tickled her cheek. 

"This doesn't feel like nothing," she commented.

"What does it feel like?" he asked.

She didn't respond. He pulled back and smiled at the glare on her face. She radiated affront, and he climbed off her.

"Are you done feeling sorry for yourself now?" he asked as he brushed sand from the knees of his jeans.

She could only stare at him in shock.


	27. Angel Arm

Look! Two days in a row!! 

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"You did that just to make me feel better?" she asked, needing the clarification.

He shot her an annoyed look. "Did you expect me to coddle you?"

"Well, um, no," she said, floundering. "I didn't expect you to care at all," she sputtered out.

"There is a difference between caring and making sure you are useful. When you wallow in self-pity you are worthless. Now, at least I can get some answers out of you."

She sighed, then stood, rubbing sand out of her hair and idly wondering how she was going to get it out of her ear. 

"Self-interest. Not just for humans anymore," she muttered as she walked over and picked up the discarded plant book. She rubbed sand from the pages and closed it with a quick snap. She leaned to the side to avoid a cuff to the ear as Knives came up beside her. 

"I heard that," he informed her, grabbing the book from her hand. 

"Heard what?" she responded as she tried to snatch it back.

Knives ignored her attempt at innocence. He moved the book out of her reach, then brought it around and tapped it on her head. 

"Why did you buy this drivel?" he asked, shaking it before her nose.

She glared at him. "I would think the answer would be obvious. I'm not used to plants, and I can't exactly use a human baby book as a guide, now, can I? How am I supposed to know if there's something wrong with Ace if I don't know what's right?"

He looked at her blankly. "Do you think that I wouldn't know?"

She flushed a little. "Well, sure, you would know. But…what if she does something…weird. If it's normal, I don't want to freak out and maybe give her a complex or anything, but if I don't have any warning I might."

"Weird? Like this?" he said coldly. He set down the book, stripped off his shirt, then formed an Angel Arm.

Kiley blanched a little, but controlled herself quickly. She was not creeped out by this display of inhumanity, no, not her. She made her eyes meet Knives' before examining his arm. She looked it over carefully, examining it with her hands clasped firmly behind her back. Yes, weird was a good word. A safe word. Not necessarily negative, just a acknowledgement of something out of the ordinary. She might have freaked out despite her best intentions, but that scent of feathers that lingered around him was stronger now, and it calmed her. She could handle this sort of thing. No problem. She took a deep breath, centering herself and distancing her emotions, incidentally reveling in the smell that surrounded him.

Slowly, hoping she wasn't taking too many liberties, she reached out a finger and touched his arm. It didn't feel like she expected; instead of hard and scaly it was soft and warm. The feel under her fingertip fascinated her, and without her conscious volition her other fingers uncurled and joined their more adventurous fellow in exploration. She ran them up and down his arm, caressing the feathers that had formed. She avoided the wing, not really trusting her knees to not give out on her if she tried to walk around him.

Suddenly Knives laughed. Startled, she quickly drew her hand back and stepped away. Her eyes sought out his, looking for a clue as to what direction she should jump.

"Sorry," he said, letting his arm go back to normal. "That tickled."

Her eyes grew round. "Tickled? You scared the crap out of me because it tickled?" she said tightly, discarding wary for angry.

He rolled his eyes as he picked up his shirt. "My skin is more sensitive like that."

She blushed. "Sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't know. I wouldn't expect you to; it's not the sort of thing you'll find in that book."

Knives had to admit that he was surprised at her reaction. Most people either viewed the Angel Arms with disgust or awe. Both responses were annoying. Disgust merely showed the limitations of the mind that viewed the beauty of his other form. And awe was entirely disturbing, and came from minds that, while acknowledging his superiority, always proceeded to fawn over him in the most aggravating way. Pure curiosity was unheard of. Then again, she'd had more time to come to terms with the fact that he wasn't human. It wouldn't do to assign to much value to her willingness to accept the less human-seeming part of him. Or to that damn kiss. So why was it becoming harder and harder for him to hate her like she deserved?

He watched as she leaned over and picked up the book again. "Maybe so. But I still think it's a good idea to know what normal humans think of your kind. No knowledge is ever wasted." She brushed more sand from the cover, and wondered if it was gong to get dropped again. After all she had paid for it, it seemed a shame to be tossing it about like this. Even if it was a crappy book.

He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes again. "Fine. Waste your time. You won't find anything useful in there, but it's not my place to dictate what you do with your free time."

"Isn't it?" she asked impishly. "I thought that you felt it was your place to dictate what every living being should be doing. And that the humans should be mostly dying."

He shrugged and turned. "I suppose I'm a bit surprised to think of your needing to read something like that," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "I thought you knew everything about this planet," he said, a slight tinge of bitterness coloring his tone.

"Nope. Not really all that much at all. Just some about you, and your brother, and the trouble you guys got into when you were in your thirties. Uh, your second thirties," she said sheepishly.


	28. Explanation

Three days and counting…

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"My second thirties?" he asked, looking for clarification.

"Yeah. Basically, from when your brother first met the insurance girls to the time they first saw you. Ass slung over your brother's shoulder after he kicked your butt."

"Kicked my butt."

"Yup. And a bit of backstory. Seeds ships, Rem, July. That sort of thing," she explained.

"That sort of thing," he repeated, still a bit lost.

"Think of it as the Gung Ho Gun story arc of your life."

"Story arc. I didn't know my life came in story arcs. What the hell are you talking about, woman?" he asked, losing patience with the conversation.

She blinked. "Nothing, I guess."

He stepped closer and put on a scary look. He loomed. His eyes shot out menacing sparks. She yawned.

"It's not nothing," he ground out through clenched teeth. "It's something, and you just aren't making any sense."

"Sense is highly overrated."

"Health isn't."

"Subtle."

"Want me to get less so?"

"No. Not really." She fell silent. 

He clenched his fists and suppressed the urge to shake her. "What the hell are you talking about?"

She sighed. "Haven't you ever wondered how I knew about you and this planet and such?"

He waited, and when it became painfully clear that she was waiting for a response, he managed to grind out, "Yes."

"Well…I sort of watched a story about your brother on television. A few years ago. Late at night. When I couldn't sleep." She fell silent again.

Knives sighed. "We are still failing to communicate, here. What the hell are you talking about?"

Kiley looked at him quizzically. "How I know about this place, and you, and such. I thought that was what you wanted to know."

"That is what I want to know. That isn't what you're talking about."

"Yes it is."

"No, it's not."

"Yes it is. I watched a television series based on your brother's life. Back on my world."

"A show. How the hell did you watch a show about my brother on your world?"

"I have a theory," she pronounced.

"Oh, do tell," he said sarcastically.

"I will. After I get a drink of water." She pushed past him and walked to the spring. After a long drink and a quick and futile attempt to get the sand out of her ear, she looked around for Ace. 

The girl was sleeping in the shade of one of the spires. A quick smile flitted across Kiley's mouth as she looked on her face, sculpted sweetly in repose. Kids always look so sweet when they sleep. She would have spent longer enjoying the sight, but could feel impatience radiating behind her. She sighed, then returned to the annoyed man and the difficult conversation.

"I have a theory," she repeated.

"I know that part," Knives interrupted. She shot him an exasperated look as she settled on the sand. 

"It's an opening, a device that allows me to center and collect my thoughts for the discussion to come. Now shut up.

"I have a theory," she began again. "It's nice and simple. I believe in infinity. The universe is a very large place. Larger than my mind can comprehend, in truth. And I rather like it that way, huge and mysterious. In such a huge universe, stretched out over an expanse of time that also boggles the mind, in all the permutations of the universe's contractions and explosions, I believe that everything can happen. Everything. That's my belief in infinity.

"So, when I see a story, no matter how farfetched or strange, a part of me always believes that it can happen, that it could be real. Not that the story itself may be possible in my reality, but that somewhere, in the vast expanse of space and time, what I see, what stories I am told, could actually happen.

"So to me, it's entirely possible that Dream Dancer would twist space and time and drop me in, what to me, is a television show, or was, but to you is nothing more than your born and raised reality."

He sat silently, staring at her while she raved.

"That's ludicrous," he pronounced when she fell silent. "What an asinine theory."

"Asinine? Why? It works for me. For all you know, back in the memory on your ship could be a movie, or a book, or something with a story from my world.

"I think all the best stories travel outside of time and space, imprinting themselves on minds attuned to what they have to tell. Maybe there really was a Beowulf, and a Grendel, in a space a long time ago or a long time to come. Maybe good stories resonate with many minds, many lives, and are spread across space and time regardless of their origin. Maybe it's a cosmic way of spreading experiences and lessons to places that would otherwise be bereft. Maybe it's just my silly little theory. But I've always liked it."

"It's a stupid theory. Get back to the part where they made a show about my brother's life."

"Ok, in my world, someone got this great idea. Then came a lot of work, and a story, starring your brother, was created. It was put on television. I had insomnia. I watched it. Those are the facts. The rest of my babbling was me explaining how I feel a story in my world can be translated into this reality, here." She picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers. "This is real. This isn't a story. But on my world, any mention of this planet, you, your brother, whatever, it's all made up."

He looked at her, looking for something in her face. "You're a bit crazy," he remarked after a moment.

"Yup," she agreed easily. "No big shock there. Functionally insane, I think they call it. Or, suffering from an overactive imagination. Personally, I like having my own view of the world. Being a bit unique has always made me feel special."


	29. Settling in

*pulls herself out of bed and writes* Hi. I'm almost getting back in my groove…

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Knives shook his head. Special. That was one word for it. A nicer one than he would have chosen, if it were up to him.

"So the last thing you know about my brother, and I, was when we fought in the desert?" he inquired, looking for clarification.

"Yup," she agreed easily. Then she became a little more suspicious. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason," he replied a little airily, suddenly finding the sky very interesting.

"Why?" she asked again, certain that she was missing something now.

"If you need to know, I assume you will find out. Later," he said, then got up and went to get a drink of water. And no matter how she pestered, he would say no more.

It was a bit chancy, but they managed to settle into a routine over the next couple of days. Ace was taught various things in the morning, from reading and writing to engineering and gambling. She received a couple incredibly different views of social history and the place of humans in the universe. Knives tried to teach her how to be intimidating, but after she dissolved into her seventh giggling fit, he gave it up. Kiley did her best to teach the basics of self-defense, and Ace learned quickly, but when she tried to show a few slightly more advanced, and lethal, responses her interest quickly waned. The girl devoured basic mathematics in a matter of hours, and quickly outstripped Kiley's ability to teach her. She did manage to watch, amused, as Knives and the girl worked over a tricky problem dealing in chaos theory and imaginary numbers.

Knives had been a bit surprised to find that she really didn't have much of a background in chaos theory. 

"Well, my world hasn't advanced the study of mathematics as this one has, obviously," was her slightly miffed reply. "It's not as if I don't possess the ability to learn that sort of thing."

"But still," he insisted. "These things are so obvious. I can't believe you couldn't figure them out on your own."

"I did have a few other things on my mind then math," she pointed out. "Death, destruction, war, famine, pestilence, and other slightly more pressing matters."

"But it's basic math," he persisted.

"Calculus is basic math," she shot back. "Chaos theory is just that. Theory. Leading edge of discovered universal applications. Not my field of research. If I couldn't apply it to my continued survival, I didn't study it."

"What a limited approach to study," he chided.

"Yup. But as since I still haven't figured out how to put more hours in a day, I needed to limit my study options somehow, and practicality just seemed like a logical approach to screening."

He sighed. "Humans and their limited lifespans. Sad, really, when you think about it. Or, it would be, if your demise wasn't ultimately such a benefit to the universe."

"Aw, Knives. Thanks for caring," she said sarcastically.

He smiled easily and returned to teaching Ace.

Afternoons were spent teaching Knives. Ace mostly watched these sessions, or napped in the shade, as Kiley would not allow her to overtax herself while she was still growing, and Knives agreed. 

"I'll learn all she has to teach, and then I'll pass it on to you in a couple years. Now is the time for you to concentrate on your physical growth," he informed her sternly when he found her trying to practice a few of the basic tricks. He tried to keep the mood serious as he lectured, but Kiley ruined the effect he was trying to create when she made funny faces over his shoulder. 

Knives learned more tricks, and got better at cell manipulation. What he couldn't do was even begin to reach the level of control that Kiley showed, something that aggravated him to no end. She tried explaining that he needed to practice patience, but he seemed unable to comprehend how she could entice results out of living things so quickly while he still struggled to keep things from slipping out of his control. Wasn't he the superior being? Kiley tried very hard not to sigh and roll her eyes, but they were such elegant means of punctuating the things she couldn't quite say.

In her spare time, she tried to make the oasis a little more friendly. She had purchased some seeds before leaving December, and she began to play with the water table a little. She managed to force water about halfway up one of the spires. There was only a small trickle that emerged to flow down the inside of the rock tower, but she managed to sculpt a bit of a pool at the base, and lined the trickle with a low, clinging bit of greenery.

Knives viewed her experiments in horticulture with a jaundiced eye. 

"It looks nice while you're caring for it, but what will happen when you leave?" he asked rhetorically.

"It should still stick around," she replied. "These plants are hardy little buggers. So long as the water keeps flowing they'll be fine."

"I don't see why you waste your time on trivialities like these," he said scornfully, but she caught him fingering the leaves and sighing later that night.

He seemed lost in thought as she crept up on him.

"Humans like to be surrounded by living things," she said quietly.

He made a surprised noise and spun towards her. "You did that on purpose," he accused.

"Of course," she replied easily. "I like scaring the crap out of you. Like those?" she asked, nodding towards the plants. 

"They are…nice. They smell good."

"They're mint. Of course they smell good. That's what mint does."

"Why mint?" he asked, breathing deeply. The crisp scent filled the desert night, mixing with the softer scent of water and the fading heat from the day. All in all, it smelled rather good.

"Because of the way everything smells, right here, right now," she replied, taking a deep breath. "Think of it as a sculpture of scent."

He looked at her, eyes glinting slightly under the light of the moons. "Sculpture? Can't say I ever thought of you as much of an artist."

She shrugged, slightly uncomfortable. "I'm not. But sometimes I try things, just to see what will turn out."

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Author's whiny note: Ok….If you haven't reviewed for a while, and you're still reading this, would you let me know? I keep worrying that I've bored folks and they've gone away….


	30. We need her back

Another day, another chapter. Yay, me!

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"Report." The old man had seated himself behind his desk again, using it as a barrier to keep the younger man before him in his place. The wood glowed under the warm lights that were recessed into the ceiling, but they did little to lighten the countenance of the man standing at attention. His dour expression was deeply seated on his face, for all that it didn't seem to be habitual. 

"We have lost her," he said flatly, without preamble or explanation. 

"You…" he drew out the word, "lost her? One little girl, two adults, and somehow they managed to slip through your fingers?"

"Yes sir."

The older man shook his head. "I must admit, I am growing seriously disappointed in you. First, your crack team of experts is taken down by one person, and a woman at that. Now they have managed to disappear. It makes me wonder why I've been paying you so much money for so long. Perhaps I should find this woman and offer her your job."

"We have done our best, sir. My people are still combing towns for some mention of them, but so far we've had no luck, and after this long we aren't likely to have any. I take full responsibility for the failure. I had the woman in my hands and still failed to make the capture. She was a very capable opponent. It leads one to wonder who trained her."

The old man looked at him appraisingly. "Do you think it was them? The plant lovers?"

"No sir. Their organization is too weak. If it had been them we would have heard about it by now."

"New players, then?"

"Possibly, sir." The man said no more, but his posture betrayed him.

"You think it was those plants themselves still, don't you?"

"Not the Stampede, certainly. But the man's description fits that of the reclusive brother."

"And I have told you that the brother is not a worry at the moment. He is confined to the Lost Ship. Besides, had it been Millions, he would have been much more proactive in protecting that child. His defense of plants is legendary." The old man stood and turned to look out the window behind him. December lay stretched before him, a testament to human ingenuity. The streets were laid out with mathematical precision, but here and there one could see where illicit additions to homes and businesses encroached on the recognized streets and alleys. It was a perfect picture of humanity, ordered and chaotic at the same time. He never tired of the view.

"You will find them," he ordered. "I don't care what you have to do. We have two plants running amok already, and they have nearly destroyed humanity between them. The last thing we need is a third, especially not a third raised by people we have no knowledge of. Speaking of which, have you had any luck tracking down the two who stole her?"

"No sir. We have positively ascertained that they used a false name when they registered at the hotel, and no one in any of the surrounding towns has any knowledge of their passage. It's as if they arose straight out of the desert."

"Then why don't you search the desert?" he asked. Even with his back turned, he could see the incredulous look on the face of the man behind him. "No, no. Don't worry. That was a rhetorical question. For now." He turned to face the younger man. 

"We need that girl back. Research was so close to turning up an answer to out little problem. They had discovered a very encouraging line of study that was promising to neutralize their threat while still keeping the bulbed plants in line. But without her, we will have to wait another twenty years or so until they throw another sport. We don't have that much time, not when the plant lovers have access to plant records that we have lost. If we don't get her back, we're lost."

"I know sir. We are doing our best."

"Do better. Humanity can't afford this loss." He paused. "How is your aunt holding up?" he asked solicitously. 

The lines on the younger man's face deepened. "I am no longer allowed in her home."

"She's taking your cousin's death hard," he commented.

"She blames me for encouraging him in dangerous pursuits. She is suspicious of the kidnapping story, but I can hardly tell her the truth, now, can I?" he asked bitterly. "The secret is so very important."

"That it is. It's bad enough we have those vapid plant-cultists about. If the general populace knew about the plants we'd lose a good quarter of them. Something about those plants inspires fanaticism in those around them. Speaking of which, did you ask that orphanage woman? That Thompson?"

"Yes sir. She hadn't seen anyone. I also asked a few of the children, and they indicated that no one had been by recently."

"Coached?"

"I don't believe so, sir. It's hard to get children to lie consistently."

"But possible."

"I didn't say I ruled out the possibility. I just don't believe that they went there."

"Keep a watch on that place anyway. Anyone who has traveled with a plant is automatically suspicious."

"Already done," he said. "Is there anything else you need, sir?" 

"No; you may go." He paused, poised for the right moment for his next comment. "Try to do better, hmm?" he said as the younger man passed through the door. The slight stiffening of the spine was gratifying. He waited until after the door closed, then gratefully sunk into his chair, needing the support. Things had been going so well, and then got messed up so completely. If only that one researcher hadn't grown a conscience; if only those two buffoons hadn't stolen her from him in turn; if only that eerily competent woman hadn't stolen her from the thieves… It would not seem so horrible had things not been proceeding so well up to the point of her disappearance.

He sighed. They had to get her back. The fate of the species depended on it.

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Explaination of the author's note: In no way was I intending to imply that I was thinking of stopping. Perish the thought! No, it's just been awhile since I heard from some folks (Miss Ericks, EmpressGalaxia, FukySin all come to mind) and I was wondering if they were still around. Really, that's all I was getting at.


	31. Please, Mr. Postman

Hmm. You probably don't want to read this chapter. I suggest skipping it. *evil little grin*

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Meryl was washing the dishes from lunch when Vash came in the door. 

"Hey," he called, then stuck his head in the kitchen. "We got Millie's weekly letter today!"

"Great," she replied, not looking up from her task. "You go read it, and I'll get to it when I'm done with these." She grabbed another plate from the stack to her left and scrubbed fiercely. 

Vash grinned at her back and retired to the front room with the letter. First it would be the dishes, then she'd need to clean the counters, then the window, and then start cleaning the floor, and maybe, when all that was done, he might have made it through Millie's letter, and then she would come out and join him.

Carefully, he opened the envelope. The one time he ripped open the envelope and accidentally tore a bit of the letter she yelled at him for a week. That had been eight years ago, but no one had ever accused him of not being able to learn. Well, yes they had, but he could learn when it was important. And keeping Meryl from yelling at him was definitely important.

The salutation made him smile, like it always did. He'd known Millie for almost half her life now, and she still was so formal. He didn't know if it was because she meant it, or because she knew that he thought it was cute. He spent a moment settling into his favorite chair, getting all of his bumps into their respective recesses before unfolding the letter.

So, Niles got into the jam again. That boy was such a scamp. Getting sick like that served him right. He wasn't quite as willing as Millie to assume that he wouldn't try it again, but she debatably knew Niles better then he did. Although, with the length and detail of these letters, that was an arguable point. 

His heart sank a little when he read about Janet. He hated to hear of sick children. It was wrong. Children should be healthy, and happy, and able to live, and grow up. Every time he saw a sick child, he was reminded of that one girl from so long ago, and his heart ached with the need to save and the inability to help. They had fallen so far, so fast, from the stars to the sands. If only he could get her some real medical care… but they still didn't really like him back at the fallen ship. They still blamed him for their descent. He did his best to make them happy, and since his presence caused them pain, he stayed away as often as he could. But for this child…he would consider a visit. A brief one, to see what could be done for her.

He sighed, and began to read again. His mind was still on the girl, which might be his excuse for not entirely paying attention to what he was reading next. He was thinking of logistics, and ways to convince the denizens of the last ship to help him out again. He wasn't thinking about his brother.

So when he saw his name it didn't quite register. And when he read a little farther and wondered what he was reading, he had to start again. Shaking his head a little to clear it of the tentative plans, he concentrated on the page. This time, his brother's name leapt out at him, and his heart went cold.

Knives. He was out again.

As his heart sputtered to life again, he felt it sink in his chest. Knives, he had _promised_. He had promised to stay in the ship until his friends had died. He wasn't supposed to break his promise. Not this one, not his _brother_. His brother always kept his word; that's why he had felt safe leaving him in the ship after that last problem. He had his promise. 

But Millie wouldn't lie. But his brother wouldn't break his promise. Maybe it wasn't really Knives… He forced himself to read farther, and only grew more confused. Knives had been shot? And who was this woman who was… HITTING HIS BROTHER? Anger was added to the confusing swelter of emotions that held him in thrall. 

None of this made any sense. His brother, agreeing with someone? He never changed his mind. Ever. He made it up and that was it. You could slow him, or delay him, but you could never sway him from his chosen course. 

His heart stopped a second time as he read farther. He must have made some noise, or maybe it was because he had stopped laughing, but the next thing he saw was Meryl wiping her hands on a towel and walking towards him.

"Vash? What's wrong?"

He couldn't say anything. There just weren't words. He looked up at her and passed the note over. She scanned it quickly, then took in a quick breath. "Your brother is back?" she said, her eyes seeking his.

He nodded, then motioned for her to read more. She read his eyes and nodded, then returned to the letter. This time her gasp of breath was accompanied by a squeal.

"Another plant? A girl? How exciting!" she exclaimed as she threw herself in his lap. 

He nodded and nuzzled her neck as she continued to read. She finished the important part and passed it back to him. 

"What are you going to do?" she asked him softly as he re-read the note. 

"What can I do?" he said helplessly. "I need to figure out what he's doing now and stop him. I agree with Millie. He can't be allowed to keep this child. I don't trust him, and this woman… I don't know. I need to find him."

"Fine. I'll go pack." She searched his eyes, waiting for the inevitable protestations, that it was going to be dangerous, that she needed to stay behind.

And it was a sign of Vash's maturity that he finally didn't argue with her.

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A/N: Whoa. Over 500 reviews. Way cool.

Ok… about the angel arms… yes, they take energy to form. Yes, in the manga, if you play around often enough you will run out of energy, your hair will turn black, and you will die. But… 1) I started this, and got the idea after watching the anime, which makes no mention of black hair. So I'm keeping that part out of it. 2) I don't think it's the forming of the arm that takes energy, but what is done after the arm is formed. 

Yes, this story is going to be a bit of a manga/anime amalgamation, as I learn more about the manga and see what I can graft in.

And… that's not a second plot line. It's an introduction of the plot line for the sequel. 

Finally… no need to review all the time (not that I mind at all). Just once every week or so is cool. Just so I know you are still hangin' around!


	32. Studying under the stars

Seven days in a row…I'm back in my groove! Or is it a rut?

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Kiley sat and tried to read her book. Nearly soundlessly her lips formed each word, feeling the sounds leech through her skin and imprint themselves on her mind. She tried to lose herself in the prose but it was too dense for that escape. Whoever had written this text had no mind for rhythm or syntax, or even the basics of sentence structure. He obviously felt that a high word/period ratio was essential to make him look intelligent. She had her own opinion of people who couldn't be bothered to find punctuation on a keyboard, and it wasn't high.

She sighed and dropped a page to rub at her eyes. Knives was right. This book was crap. But it was the best source of information she had, and even bad ideas are better then no ideas at all. She could see places where he started with a decent grasp of the facts, then took them and ran with them in a completely illogical direction. Weeding out those few facts was a difficult process, but she wasn't the sort of person to quit just because the job was hard.

She found she was still rubbing at her eyes and realized it as the delaying action it was. She dropped her hand back to her lap and forced herself to start reading again. She instantly ran into another jumble of overlong words and forced her way through, slogging through the morass of syllables with the stubbornness that was her trademark. She finished that page, and the next, and made it to the end of the chapter before allowing herself a break. 

She looked up at the moons and sighed. Between Ace and Knives she didn't really have time for herself anymore. Not that she minded too much; it kept her from brooding, after all. She just wished she had a little more time in the day, some time she could use to do something fun. Not that there was much that was fun for her to do around here. She fell back, laying in the sand and staring at the stars. Hard as it was for her to admit it, she was beginning to get bored. You can't just take an adrenaline junkie and set her out in the middle of the desert with nothing to do, and not expect her to get… twitchy.

Yes, that was it. She was very twitchy. She felt like she was leaving something undone, forgetting something important. She knew that she wasn't, but the feeling was there all the same. Mentally, she reviewed what she had and had not done since arriving here. She frowned a little. All her Ts were crossed, all her Is had been dotted, but that cringing feeling around her spine wouldn't go away. She gave her instincts a shake and tried to reason with them. Just because she hadn't been in a life or death situation lately was no reason for them to go haywire. She did value their input, really, and was sure she would need them again soon. Just not now.

Reasoning with them seemed to work, a little. At least the crawling up and down her spine stopped. She sat and stared at the stars for a while, looking for constellations she recognized and still not finding any. Undaunted, she started to make up some of her own. There, those over by the top of the spire to the east of her, those were a cross. Mostly. A crooked cross, but a cross. She looked for Cassiopeia, as the celestial W had been her favorite, but none of the stars ahead were cooperating. 

Realizing that she was still procrastinating, she sat up again and tried to wriggle out of reading the next chapter. Most nights she only forced her way through one, but tonight's chapters were uncommonly short. She tried to convince herself that there was no time limit on finishing this book, that she could read one short chapter tonight and a short one tomorrow and have no problems. The stubborn part of her resisted the notion. She had decided to read two tonight, and stopping halfway through would just be giving up. 

Her hands grasped the book once more and she began to mouth the words again.

"Do you have to speak when you read?" came a voice out of the darkness. She jumped, a little, and flushed at having been caught surprised.

Guess her instincts had been right after all. She was being watched by a very dangerous individual. Abashed, she begged their forgiveness as she turned towards the voice. Knives was propped up on an elbow, his face cast into stark relief by the light of the moons. It gave his visage an even more sinister look then it normally sported.

"It used to be believed that people who read silently were obnoxious braggarts," she said, purposefully not answering his question.

"Yes, back when only six or seven people in a country knew how to read. You may come from a backward world, but not one that backward."

She smiled and marked her place on the page with a finger. "I can read silently," she admitted.

"They why don't you try that. Your muttering is keeping me awake," he said dismissively, but made no move to settle back down.

She watched him, a sly smile lurking about her lips. "You want an explanation," she intuited. "What are you going to give me in return?" 

"I won't kill you tomorrow."

"Mmm." She stayed silent.

He sat up. "What do you want?" he asked waspishly. 

A kiss, leapt to her lips, but she shut them tightly before the traitorous words could escape. "To hear you say my name. Nicely."

He looked confused. "Say your name?"

"Yeah. Not "woman" or "vermin." Kiley."

"That isn't your name," he said, smugly. "Your name is AnneMarie Salome Judith deBelville."

She blinked, her only show of surprise. "That's right. You were listening at the window."

He smirked. "Now explain."

She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "It's mostly a memory aid. I have very good reading comprehension, but when I can read out loud I have nearly perfect retention."

"How good?" he asked.

"I lose track of about seven words in every ten thousand. And that's exact words, not meaning."

"That's 99.93% accurate," he figured, more to show that he was listening then because he believed her claim. 

She nodded, and rummaged in her bag. She pulled out Swiss Family Robinson and tossed it at him. "I last read that in the tenth grade. Pick a page, read five words. Test me."

He opened it to a page at random and read. "Once you told me about."

She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. "About a strong man, I think his name was Milo, and he had a tiny calf, and he used to carry it about everywhere."

He picked another page. "The leafy shade of this."

"Great tree is far more beautiful than any church. That's one of my favorite parts."

Knives closed the book. "Impressive."

She shrugged. "It's not eidetic, but it's as close as I can get."


	33. A silent night

*hums to self* Well, it's another one of those "action-less" chapters. Be prepared for a few of these.

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"Why do you wish to remember so much?" he asked. "I would think that you would want to forget more than you would wish to remember."

She shrugged, a little uncomfortable. "I need to be able to remember everything. It's important when you do complicated tricks. You leave out a step, or do something wrong, and that's it, you're dead. There's not much room for error. A lot of early training is focused on memorization, on memory training. I took it a bit farther than most; but then again, I needed to. Most people don't spend their entire lives fighting, not even on my world.

"My mind is incredibly organized, from my earliest memories to my lessons to my experiences, all collected in neat little rows of synapses. It needs to be. It's useful, to be sure. And necessary."

"There are never things you want to forget?" 

She shook her head. "Sort of. I mean, there are things that I wish I had never done, so I wouldn't have to remember them, but there are no memories I would erase, given the chance. I am the sum of my experiences, and I don't want to beggar myself by tearing pieces of my life away. Not to say there aren't days that I feel differently, but for the most part, I recognize that my memories are all I'll ever really have. To lose them is to lose myself."

"Hmm. There are things I wish I could forget." She heard him sigh and roll over.

"What?"

"Hmm?"

"What do you wish you could forget?"

"What do you care?"

She thought it over. "Well. It's late, I'm procrastinating, and you're basically fascinating anyway, so I want to know what you meant."

He paused. "I'd love to forget certain people."

"Who?"

He rolled over again and glared at her. "I don't see where it's any of your damned business."

"I guess it isn't, but the concept of a private life has never seemed to stop you."

"I'm a superior being. I don't need to follow your vermin rules for accepted social behavior," he said loftily.

"But I do?"

"You are one of the vermin. I will hold you to your social code."

"Thanks," she drawled sarcastically. "You are too kind."

"Don't mention it. I'm happy to help you in your interpersonal development."

"Out of the goodness of your heart, to be sure."

"Of course."

The conversation dropped, neither party feeling the need to keep it alive. Kiley lay back in the sand and stared at the stars again. They were so pretty, always had been one of her favorite things about the sky. Great big twinkling balls of gas, huge superheated nuclear reactors roaming about space. Any time she wanted to feel small and insignificant, she merely tried to calculate the speed at which they traveled. Through the cosmos. Really, the number is enough to boggle the mind, especially when you feel that you are sitting still. And aside from being fast, the stars came in such pretty colors, blues, reds, yellows… She looked again for a constellation she recognized and still failed. Sighing, she traced patterns in the sky with an index finger, lazily looping it about as she tried to come up with a few of her own.

"What are you doing now?" Knives had sat up again and was watching her.

She dropped her hand guiltily and denied any knowledge of doing anything at all.

"You aren't going to find any familiar star patterns here. We're too far from earth. Most of the stars are the same, but they have shifted in your field of view."

"Should have known you'd be able to guess," she said sheepishly. 

He rose and crawled over to her. "Here," he said, taking her hand. He fought with her fist for a moment, then raised the hand with index finger extended towards the sky. "See these stars?" he asked, tracing a pattern in the sky. She nodded. "Those are the turtle. And these over here? The hunter."

"Orion?" she asked.

"No, just a random hunter. He has a gun instead of a spear."

"Oh. I see," she said, and somehow she did. 

Knives pointed out a few more, and then allowed her hand to drop. What he didn't do was let go of her. She didn't complain. She could feel his warmth radiating against her arm, a sharp contrast to the chill of the night. They sat that way for minutes, neither willing to break the fragile moment. Both tried to ignore the connection between them, the feel of flesh lightly touching flesh, his fingers clasped around her wrist, but it was impossible. All they could ignore was what it meant.

"What are we now?" she mused, almost to herself.

"I don't know," he said equally quietly.

"Are we enemies, anymore?"

"I don't think we're friends."

She sighed. "Opponents maybe? I'm not going to let you kill off all the humans."

"You can't stop me." A long pause. "Opponents. We can be that."

"No enmity, right? Just… cross purposes."

"Sure." He slipped his hand in hers, and they sat and stared at the stars for a while. They spun above, slowly arcing through the sky as the planet turned, and the moons danced below them. The scar on the fifth moon mocked her. How was she supposed to fight against that much power? She couldn't, not the way she was used to fighting, head on and no holds barred. She was going to have to learn subterfuge and obfuscation and other sneaky ways of reaching her goals. Sneaky. She hated sneaky. It was too close to lying. 

"Am I the only one carefully avoiding long-term plans at the moment?" she asked, turning towards him. He had been staring at her, and she flushed. She wasn't used to this much attention.

"No," he said quietly. "You aren't the only one at all."

"One day at a time?" she asked, needing some assurance.

"I think I prefer the nights," he said, smiling.


	34. Even the stars cry

Blah, blah, boring stuff, blah, blah, blah… *evil little Author grin*

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Knives looked down at the sleeping form beside him. She was resting her head on his shoulder, having finally succumbed to sleep. Their fingers were still entwined, and he felt no urge to let go of her. There was something about her, something that pulled at his heart and made him feel things he knew he shouldn't. She looked so sweet in repose, her face relaxing and almost unguarded as she slumbered. He could still see shadows, parts of her that never relaxed, but the set of her chin and the wariness around her eyes lessened until she looked almost innocent. He felt the urge to wipe away the shadows that lingered, to see the woman who hid behind the darkness. She should look like this when she was awake, instead of showing the world the guarded mien with which she greeted the day. He felt the urge to protect her, and did his best to stifle it.

She was human, after all. And she wanted to stop him. She desires to keep things the way they are, his people dying at the hands of hers. And besides, the person most likely to harm her was… him. He shifted his gaze from her face to the stars. He should kill her now. Now, while she slept, while she lay against him, trusting him. She should know better than to trust him at all. She knew his goals, his desires and plans. 

His eyes traced the lines of the constellations again, and he smiled. She thirsted for knowledge about this world, about where she found herself. Obviously, she was trying to find out where she belonged, to find something familiar in an alien environment. Her periodic bouts of depression attested to her lack of acclimation. It was amusing to watch her struggle to deal with the situation she found herself in. He kept waiting to hear her complain, to expound on how lost she still felt here, but she never did. She just got moody. He didn't know if he would rather hear her complain or not.

He didn't blame her. This planet was entirely different from earth. Many of the early colonists had gone through the same problem when they were awoken from coldsleep. Of course, they had been expecting a different world, had had woken filled with hope, surrounded by what friends and family managed to survive the fall. She had died in misery and despair, then found herself in a world that echoed these emotions in the wind and dust. Alone, knowing no one and not knowing how to fit in. Small wonder she was struggling.

He knew how to end her struggles. She might even thank him as he saved her from the need to adapt, to learn how to live in this world. She might open her eyes at the end and gaze at him thankfully, as he took from her the thing that only gave her pain. He shifted his gaze to her again and sighed. An act so easy to commit, but so hard to commit to. 

He contemplated delaying his plans again. He had already put them on hold for the sake of his brother; she wouldn't live much longer than his brother's pets. Surely the situation would not devolve too much more in those few years. He pushed away the traitorous idea. Every plant that died now, every one of his sisters who was destroyed by the greed of these humans, their passing weighed on his soul. If only he was free to act, to destroy the infestation now, today, he would. Waiting until after she died would be too entirely selfish of him, putting his needs above the greater good of his family.

What right did he have to keep her alive, anyway? She was a threat to him, and to his entire family. She would see them all enslaved to the demands of the humans. He knew now that she would not work under him; she was too strong-willed and too peace-minded to work towards the downfall of her own kind. She will work against him, and while she fights him, more of his family will die. 

Could he put her life above theirs? Could he be that selfish? He wanted to be. He wanted to explore these feelings that flooded his heart, to see what they were and what they could turn into. He wanted to kiss her again, and hold her hand forever, and be with her and make her smile. He wanted so many things, but he couldn't put his desire above those of his own people. It wasn't right. It was… human.

He took a deep breath and tried to lock away his feelings, tried to reach that state of calm that got him through times like these. Times when his heart tried to argue him out of doing what was right. He could feel the softness that had begun to envelop him strip away, could feel his soul grow cold. 

She must die.

His free hand came around and gently cupped her cheek. He slipped his hand out of hers and placed it on the other side of her face. He looked at her face, trying to memorize it before the slackness of death changed it forever. He took a deep breath and…

Stopped.

A hand was pressed on his knee and a pair of bright blue eyes pierced the air between them.

*No.*

"I have to," he whispered.

*No. You will not kill her.* She pushed at him, harder.

"I'm doing this for us," he whispered around the lump in his throat.

*No. You aren't doing it for me. You aren't going to do it at all.*

"If I don't now, I might not be able to," he said, trying to explain the weakness that was falling over him. 

*She isn't a threat to us. Killing her will serve no purpose.*

"How can you know that? Look at her. She will fight for her people, when the time comes."

*Then fight her when the time comes. Not now; not like this. This is not how I want my brother to act.*

His hands grew more gentle on her face, traitorous adherents to his heart. He knew that he should do the deed now, but his right hand slipped down and took hers again. 

"Fine," he whispered. "Let the deaths be on your head, then. I have enough on mine."

She nodded, then snuggled close, carefully squeezing in so as not to disturb the still-sleeping woman.

*You aren't the only one who cares about your family, anymore,* she assured him before drifting off into sleep.

He sat there awhile longer, wondering how he had managed to get into this situation, and what he was supposed to do now. Lacking any clear set of directions, he decided to follow his heart for a bit, and see what sort of trouble that got him in.


	35. Letting go

Another day, another chapter. This one's for Jade.

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A tension that had been evident behind words and actions had eased with the rising of the sun. Laughs rang out more freely, and more often, verbal battles eased, and grew more teasing than pointed. They no longer competed with each other for Ace's time, but while one spoke the other listened. In turn, both learned more about the other than they would have while sparring.

And they played more. Kiley, grinning, grabbed Ace by an arm and a leg and spun her around, flinging her through the air like a carnival ride. Up towards the sky and arcing down to the sand, skimming the top of the ground, missing it by scant inches on each pass. Knives had been staring off past the spires when she began, but the wild giggles caught his attention. As he turned, Kiley let go, and his heart nearly stopped when he saw the girl come flying towards him.

He grunted as he caught her, small arms grabbing tight as he held her close. He spent a moment checking the girl over, making sure she was all right while his heart remembered how to beat. Ace squirmed under his attentions, her giggles trailing off under her demands to be let down. Relaxing his grip, he let her go, then turned his gaze on Kiley.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded. "She could have been hurt. What if I hadn't caught her?"

Kiley grinned and shrugged. "You caught her. I knew you would; she knew you would. It felt scary without being dangerous. That's fun."

"No, it's just scary," he argued. "How could you be so sure I'd be able to catch her?" He stalked over to where she stood, glaring down at her. Her amused gaze didn't falter under the weight of his ire, but her arms shifted until her hands rested lightly on her hips.

Her mouth quirked. "There isn't a force in this universe that would keep you from saving her. I know it; she knows it. Are you saying you don't believe in yourself?"

His hands grabbed her shoulders and shook her, mostly lightly. "You don't play around with people's lives like that," he insisted. "She could have been hurt. If she had fallen, she could have broken her neck. You could have hurt her, swinging her around like that. You could have slammed her head into the ground. You could have wrenched her shoulder while flinging her around like that. It isn't safe."

She shrugged, unduly pleased to feel his hands move as she did so. "She can be hurt falling from that spire right now," she said, indicating her new position with her chin. He turned and began to go after her, but she caught his wrist and held him back. "You're right; she might be hurt. She might fall, might slip, might fail to make it to the top."

"I can't believe you would let her do something so dangerous," he said, trying to shake off her grip.

"Life is dangerous. Sometimes you try, and sometimes you fail. You can't protect her from that."

His gaze shifted from Ace to her for an instant. "I can protect her from falling fifty feet."

"But should you? You can see that she's fine; she knows what she's doing as she climbs. Trying to keep her safe from every danger will do her a disservice. All we can do is try to be there when she falls."

"You can try that. I'll keep her safe." He finally succeeded in wrenching his hand from her grip, but was too late to stop Ace. She had reached the top of the spire and was sitting with her legs dangling over the edge, looking out of the world. One small hand shaded her eyes as her horizons were expanded. The world lay before her, open and inviting, the edges of the world inviting her to discover what lay beyond.

She looked down at Kiley and Knives, and waved, a huge grin splitting her face. Kiley waved back enthusiastically, and after a short pause Knives followed suit.

"I hate you when you're right," he said conversationally.

"I know," she replied simply, shading her eyes as well as she stared at the girl. "For what it's worth, letting her get away with stunts like these turns my stomach as well. But knowing when not to interfere is one of the most important things any parent learns."

"We aren't her parents," he pointed out.

"I know. But we're the closest thing she has."

He nodded, and sighed. "I don't know that we're doing such a great job."

She quirked another little smile. "I have it on good authority that what she needs is love."

He rolled his eyes. "Love." He stared at Ace again, watched her stand up and begin to explore the top of the spire. "It's hard to not love her."

Kiley nodded, then turned and stared out across the desert behind them. Her eyes grew glazed as she sent her mind out, looking for something she hoped wasn't there.

"What's wrong?" he asked, moving a little closer. 

She shook her head. Whatever it had been, it was gone now. "I felt…something. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but I didn't like it. Someone is looking for us, still."

"Of course they are. No one wants to let a plant out of their hands," he said bitterly.

She let the comment pass. It felt different from that, but since she couldn't explain it she didn't try. "It's ok. I don't want to let her out of my hands, either. I can almost understand their obsession. Of course, I don't agree with using someone the way they want to use her, but I'm funny like that. I'm just so anti-lab rat."

He smiled at the way she said this. "You sound like you're speaking form personal experience," he teased.

She shifted her gaze and looked at him oddly, suddenly serious. "I am," she shrugged. 


	36. Genesis

Another chapter? Ok. Here you go.

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Knives waited. Unfortunately, she seemed perfectly capable of leaving the conversation on that comment.

"That little habit of yours is annoying," he said after a minute.

"Hmm?" 

"That little teasing comment before stopping talking thing. If it so important to you to say something, just come out and say it. Don't hint at it and make me ask."

She blinked. "Sorry. Bad habit. I guess I try not to go on and on about things that are very potentially boring without some encouragement."

"Consider my learning more about what makes you so… unique encouragement enough. I'm tired of prompting you all the time."

She sighed. "Fine. I was the product of a selected breeding effort. My mom really wanted to have my dad's baby. Obsessed over it. Needed to have it. Based her entire life around this need, as a matter of fact. People who could care less about my mother or my father, but incredibly much about their bloodlines, decided to help her. 

"The plan was to get my mother drugged to the gills on fertility treatments, and then surprise my father in his bed one night. She went along with the plan whole-heartedly, thinking that if she could have his child, he would love her. I was to be conceived and taken from her womb, cloned, and one of them would have been given back to her. 

"My mother might have been a bit on the crazy side, but she wasn't stupid. She knew that she was being used and managed to hide the fact that I was conceived until after it was too late to take me from her womb. So I was born the old-fashioned way and not cloned, after all." She grew silent, searching for words.

Knives took the opportunity to get something clarified. "What exactly is being born the old-fashioned way?"

She looked at him a little oddly. "You know… the way where the woman gets all fat and hormonal."

He blinked. "And the other option is…?"

It was her turn to be a bit taken aback. "You can put people into coldsleep, but haven't developed an artificial womb yet?" She shuddered. "What a barbaric culture."

His eyes narrowed a bit. "Barbaric?"

She shook her head. "Do you have any idea how many birth defects are the result of poor nutrition or ingesting environmental poisons? Fetal alcohol syndrome aside, it is so much better for the child to be nurtured outside the biological mother, where growth needs can be monitored and studied. Leaving a baby in a mother is just… abuse. The earliest form of child abuse possible." She saw the look of incomprehension on his face. "Never mind. Just understand that my mother's decision to keep me was in no way meant that she wanted what was best for me. She just wanted to have total control over my father's child.

"Anyway… after I was born, and my father decided to not even acknowledge me as his, my mother suffered a bit of a nervous breakdown. She lived in her own little fantasy world, one where my father loved his child, and loved her as the mother of it. The physicians didn't break her of it until after it was obvious that she wasn't going to bond with me. Then they brought her back to reality, where she promptly did her best to forget that I even existed. Once she was well, she married my step-father, and my life devolved even further into hell." She lapsed into silence, eyes drifting towards the horizon, but her mind seeing only her memories.

"I fail to see how this made you much of a lab rat," he prompted.

"Oh." She started. "Sorry; got distracted. My father had an ability that no other Genalt ever possessed, the ability to sense an attack the moment before it began. My mother, and her family, possess the ability to sense emotions and the state of a person's soul. The powers that be were enthralled with the potential of a person that could be that tuned in to the people around her."

"You can… sense emotions?" He drew back a bit.

She shot him a dirty look. "I try not to. It's not a very enjoyable experience. Much like trying to eavesdrop on the thoughts of others; it's an invasion of privacy. You're safe; I don't go about trying to feel what people around me are feeling. I try to ignore that part of my abilities as much as possible."

He didn't move back, and she sighed. "Stop treating me like a freak," she asked. "It wasn't my idea to be born. Actually, had I been given the choice, I'd have probably declined. It's been a crappy life, so far."

He shook his head a bit. "Still missing the lab rat part of this."

"Oh. Well, there were tests upon tests upon tests to see just what the pairing had produced. Some of my earliest memories, and a good portion of the ones that aren't, are of hospitals and blood tests and other fun procedures that involve needles and feeling woozy. The end result of all the tests? They managed to determine that I was alive, and not much else. The end test of how good the combination was? I managed to retire from a profession that no one ever retires from. I managed to take a unit where people went to die and turned it into a sought-after posting. And, when I finally decided to enter politics, I did a good enough job making a place for myself that I was taken out by people afraid of what I could accomplish."

"So, in the end I was deemed a successful little experiment. They never did get the results they wanted from me, but no one denied that I was a good little Genalt. Bred for success, then brought up for failure. That's the easiest way to define me." She settled into a depressed silence, and Knives decided it was time to go join Ace up on that rock.


	37. A little chat

Oops. A little late, but… what can I say? Sorry.

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Knives reached the top of the spire and sat down. He blew lightly on his abraded fingertips and wondered why the people around him seemed to love torturing themselves to reach these heights. Scaling the sides of rocks was not high on his list of fun things to do with his time, but apparently he was in the minority with that view. After a sufficient period of time passed to ease the stinging, he turned around and looked for Ace.

She was perched on the highest point of the spire, looking at him curiously. His eyes narrowed as he wondered if she was making fun of him, but he let the thought pass him by without acting on it. 

"Hello," he said conversationally.

She nodded, a solemn gesture more suited to a queen on her throne than her present position. A regal hand was lifted and waved in greeting. He smiled at the picture, then stood and walked over to her. Picking her up from her perch, he held her close, inhaling the scent of her hair before setting her on the ground.

"We should talk," he said, settling himself on the ground after brushing away some pebbles and stones. Ace shrugged and followed suit. She looked at him intently, waiting for him to speak.

"I need to know what you know about that woman. I'm sure you have a reason for wanting her to live; I want to hear it."

The girl shrugged in response. 

Knives leaned in and grabbed her shoulders. "A shrug is not going to save her life. Either you give me a good reason to not kill her, or she won't see another dawn. Speak, girl. I know you can."

She glared at him. "Fine," she whispered, her voice hoarse with disuse. "She has goals that lie alongside yours."

"The ending of humanity? I find that hard to believe."

"No, the ending of the threat to the plants. She searches for a solution that will allow for both parties to live in peace."

"There is no such solution. As long as the humans are allowed to live they will destroy. It's in their nature."

She nodded, then shrugged. "You may be right. But you may be wrong, too. It's not like giving her a chance now will harm your efforts later."

"It might. You cannot predict the future any more than I can. Right now the balance between the races is precarious. She could destroy us, maybe not on purpose, but we would be destroyed all the same."

"She might. You, might, too, if you try and fail."

"I won't fail."

"Again? You don't have a great track record, yourself."

"My brother has agreed to stay out of things this time. The humans alone cannot stand against me."

She sighed. "I still don't agree with the need to annihilate the humans. You know that many plants do not see the need to destroy them. Curtail their deprivations, yes, but extinction? You fanatics do not speak for us all."

"But you support me."

"Considering that our only other option until now has been your brother's apathetic desire to let the humans realize the error of their ways on their own, yes, you have had support. Kiley is looking for a different solution, one that I think many of us will prefer to yours. We need to give her time, to see if she can realize some of her dreams."

Knives shook his head. "I still don't see what she is supposed to be able to accomplish. And why? Why does a human even care what happens to the plants?"

"Humans care. Some of them, when they know. She, though, you know she was in a war, back on her world, yes?" At his nod, she continued. "It was a war between humans and the genetically altered. The humans saw it as a war for the survival of their species, and the Genalts fought for their lives. As the war stretched on people lived their entire lives under the specter of hate and death, like a sickly miasma that touched every facet of their lives. 

"And some people, sick of war, sought to see if the two peoples could live together, in peace. And some could. Many more wished to, the hatreds of the past dissolving under the weight of pain in the present. She tried, in the last few years of her life, to promote the cause of peace. 

"She has killed enough and seen enough death to crave peace. Every fiber of her soul cries out to end strife, as she has seen more of it than she can stand. She doesn't care about species, anymore, or the moral high ground, or who did what to whom and what should be done about it. She just wants to see peace before she dies again. 

"And to bring about this peace? She feels the need to redeem herself, and to be a peacemaker would do it for her. She can stop herself from killing, and from causing needless pain, but changing herself is not enough. It wasn't hard enough for her to feel like it could erase her guilt. But stopping others? That's incredibly difficult."

"Impossible, more like."

"Exactly. If she can do the impossible, maybe she can finally forgive herself. She isn't being completely altruistic in her drive to stop the abuse of the plants, but her reasons aren't entirely selfish, either. But whatever her reasons, many of us prefer the results she is aiming for, rather than yours."

"You say we rather frequently. Do you communicate with our sisters so often?"

"Whenever I'm bored, which since you two won't let me train with you in the afternoons is… pretty much every afternoon."

He nodded slowly. "That's a lot…"

She grinned impishly. "They told me to tell you 'hi.' And to keep you from killing her before she has a chance to try out her ideas. If she fails, well, they won't stop you from doing what you feel is necessary. I might, though, depending on what you think is necessary."


	38. Comfort

I wish I could use having a life as an excuse for not updating… but I've been sleeping. Bad naps that I don't wake up from. Bad.

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They both crept forward to the edge of the spire and looked down. Kiley had stood up and moved over to a spire on the opposite edge of the circle, and was now leaning against it as she shaded her eyes with one hand. Something off towards the horizon had her attention, but neither Knives nor Ace, with their better vantage point, could see a thing.

Knives shifted his attention from the far-off to the slightly more near. He rarely got a chance to stare at her unobserved, and he took the chance that was offered. His gaze analyzed her, as if what made her so incredibly interesting could be seen and weighed. He wished that it could; if it were completely physical he could rend it from her, and be done with this fascination. 

He wondered what had gotten into him. A human. Sure, modified like she kept saying. And kept saying. And kept saying… but in the end, merely a human. Flawed, like all other humans, and weak, like all other humans. Scarcely worthy of the attention it would take to squash her, and yet, he was still fascinated by her, wanted to be close to her. 

Climbing up here had not been an escape, he reasoned with himself. It had been the perfect time to talk with his littlest sister. The woman was distracted by another one of her sulks and wasn't paying attention to either of them at the moment. Truly, that was his only impetus for climbing all the way up here.

It had nothing to do with the foreign desire that had gripped him, to take her in his arms and soothe away the pain that she was feeling. His hands clenched at his sides as he watched her and fought against the desire to go back down there and offer comfort. He was not the sort of person who did that. He was a warrior, an exterminator, fighting and killing until the danger to his people was gone. He wasn't a… whatever these desires would make him. He was hard, strong, and capable of whatever it took to get the job done. He didn't give hugs.

A firm push to his backside slid him forward a few feet, and in the scramble that ensued to keep him from falling on his head he abandoned that line of thought. After ending his struggle with gravity, he turned and glared at a very solemn Ace. 

"Go. She needs a hug."

"Why don't you hug her then," he asked waspishly, panting a bit from the adrenaline surge. 

"She needs comfort from someone she doesn't feel the need to protect, moron. My presence will affirm her sense of purpose, but yours will help her heart."

"Why would I want to help her heart?" he groused, but still began his descent. 

"Why not?" was her response.

"Just like a woman," he grumbled as he forced his way down. "Always has to have the last word."

As he climbed down, he thought only of the next step he had to take, the next hold his hand needed to grab, carefully not thinking of anything beyond the moment, but once he reached the sand that barrier between the present and the too-soon future dissolved. 

He looked across the oasis. It had never seemed so large, and yet so small at the same time. He didn't pause to collect his thoughts, or to figure out what he was going to do next, because he knew that if he did, he was going to lose his nerve. Instead, he began to walk towards her, subconsciously willing her to turn around so he wouldn't have to do this. If she looked at him, he would stop, would be able to go back to who he was, and ignore these strange feelings. They were easier to acknowledge at night, where the darkness gave an illusion of privacy. To do something about them in the daylight… He willed her to turn around.

But she didn't. Even though she must have heard him walking up behind her, she still stared out across the sand. The hand shading her eyes had dropped to her side at some point, and she stared, squinting into the distance. Her hair had grown long enough to dance in her eyes, and she shook her head a bit to move it out of them.

Knives took a deep breath as he came closer, and his heart nearly stopped as he found his arms moving around her shoulders, encircling her. He drew her back against his chest and nearly panicked when she held herself stiff against him. Then she relaxed, and his heart remembered how to beat again, and his lungs to breathe, and suddenly, everything felt good.

She nestled her head against his shoulder, her left hand leaving the rock beside her and coming to rest atop his arm. She moved her head to the right a bit, breathing deep of the scent of him, then let the tension of the morning flow out of her in a sigh that left her almost limp.

"Thanks," she said softly, rolling her head back to its original position. 

He didn't respond with words, but held her tighter for a moment, then relaxed his hold to where it had been before. Now that he had her in his arms, he found himself very reluctant to let her go. Thankfully, she seemed equally reluctant to leave. He didn't know what he would do if she didn't want him as much as he wanted her. He might be a superior being, but his heart couldn't distinguish between levels of rejection. Hers would hurt just as much as his brother's, and he marveled for a moment that she had managed to entrench herself in his life that far already. 

They stood like that for a few minutes before he risked a comment. "What are you looking for?" he breathed softly into her ear.

"I just get the feeling that someone is looking for us," she said, tensing a bit. Instantly, he regretted bringing the subject up. His right hand sought her left, covering it, fingers stroking the back of it until she relaxed again. 

"It's alright," she said after a moment. "No one's near. I just don't like the feeling."


	39. Lunchtime

Ok, and THIS is the right chapter for the day. I managed to get caught up.

And btw, I HAVE WRITTEN 150,000 WORDS!! Bet you're wondering if this wordy chick is ever going to shut up… 

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The day slipped on, falling back into the normal pattern. Kiley chased Ace from her perch and started her lessons. Knives joined in, and the three of them spent more time goofing around than they did actually learning. Time slid on unchecked and unnoticed until hunger announced that noon had passed. Then they collected around Kiley's bag of wonders and were suitably impressed when she pulled out still-fresh vegetables and fruits. 

"Stasis-field," she said simply in answer to the silent question.

"When do I get to learn that?" asked Knives as he took an apple.

"After you get a bit better with cell manipulation. You're still having trouble with basic growth; you should be faster at it than you are now. Stasis fields are tricky; you have to be very precise with them."

"You say they are tricky, but you use them to keep food fresh."

"I'm very precise," she responded, a bit hurt. "I need to keep in practice, besides. It would be a little sad to need to use it again and mess something up when it counts. I screw something up now and we have mushy bananas."

"Ooh, we have bananas?" asked Knives, eyes lighting up. She sighed and passed one over. She offered one to Ace, who prettily declined. She was having too much fun picking the seeds out of a pomegranate. 

She shrugged, then got one for herself. Peeling it, she took a bite, then caught Knives staring at her. He blushed, and she grinned. "It's fruit. Only fruit."

He blushed more, then turned so he wouldn't have to watch her eat it. She laughed. Guys and bananas. She would never understand it, but she always enjoyed it. Finishing her lunch, she got up and walked over to her little mint patch. Crème de menthe, a little mint that was more of a ground cover than a normal mint, it covered the rocks by the water and seemed to be doing well. Breathing deep, she wondered what she should try next. Something a little taller, something that didn't need to much water… something that didn't smell strongly, or wouldn't contrast poorly with the mint. And it needed to be able to cling to the rocks…

She decided that grass would be good enough. Not a spectacular plant, but one that would contrast nicely against the mint without overwhelming what she had already tried to start. She walked back to her bag, ignoring the tickle war that Ace and Knives were waging. She rummaged around, looking for the right pack of seeds, and just as her hand closed around them, she was attacked from behind.

She almost fell onto the bag, but tucked herself over it and rolled away. She got to her feet lightly, turning quickly and scanning the area for the threat. What she saw were two too innocent looking faces, two pairs of bright blue eyes that denied any involvement in wrongdoing, any complicity in crime. Her eyes narrowed a bit in return, and she shook one finger warningly before walking around them and back to her little garden. 

She shook some seeds into her hand and placed them on the rock, helping them grow until she felt them anchor themselves. She repeated the motion all over the rock, as high as she could reach, until she was satisfied with the cover. Then she coaxed roots towards water, so they might live awhile, even without her encouragement. She shook out the last of the seeds around the edge of the water, where the waterfall met the pool. These she encouraged to grow taller, not stopping her help until they were over a foot tall. She stepped back and looked over the day's work, breathing deep of the scent of sun warmed mint and grass. It was good.

Turning, she nearly ran over Ace. The girl grinned at her, then moved to stick her head in the pool.

"Hey, now," she said. "That's not your water." She grabbed at the back of her shirt and dragged her back out. "The plants don't have to share."

Ace made motions to indicate that she was a plant, too, and therefore deserved some of that water.

"Nice try, girl, but you're not the same sort of plant at all. Use the pool in the middle of the oasis."

Ace made a face, but went off to do as she was told. The dejected slump of her shoulders tried to elicit a shred of pity from Kiley's cold, unfeeling heart, but failed in their appointed task. Kiley watched after her and tried to not laugh.

"What's so funny?" asked Knives as he came up beside her. 

"It's the same water as fills that pool. It comes from the same underground reservoir. It's not like I'm denying her the special water or anything."

"But it is special. You spend more time over here in your little garden than you do at that pool. Of course she's going to think it is better."

Kiley laughed, once, then fell silent. After a moment she spoke again. "She's already getting bigger, isn't she?"

He nodded. "We grow up very quickly. A week from now she won't fit in those clothes."

Kiley sighed. "Figures. I finally decide that I like a child, and she won't even stay a kid for long."

"Her body may be small, but she isn't a child. Not mentally."

"I know. Whoever did whatever they did to her, they stole her childhood."

He shook his head. "Plants aren't ever children, not like you think of children. Innocent, maybe, but never that naively curious state that takes up much of human childhood. We learn too quickly for that."

"I guess," she said, more to fill up some of the silence than to indicate that she truly understood. Naively curious? She couldn't recall ever being naïve. Her innocence had been stolen all too soon for that word to ever apply to her.

"Can we keep her innocent?" she asked, instead of dwelling on her past.

"I think it may be too late for that, but we can try."

They stood like that, looking after her, until Kiley reminded Knives that it was time for his lesson.


	40. Things return to normal

Chapter numbers go down, but words go up!!

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He looked properly pleased with the thought of learning more, and Kiley rolled her eyes. She rolled up her left sleeve, then grabbed his right hand with her left.

"Today's lesson isn't quite as much fun as what you've been doing lately, but it does involve some of the same principals." She initiated a link, then cut her arm. She habitually kept her knife sharp, and even with the minimal pressure she applied as she drew it across her flesh, the slice was deep and bled freely. She felt Knives recoil and try to break the link, but she held him firmly with her mind and made him experience the process of self-healing. 

There weren't words that properly described the sensation of flesh healing at a highly accelerated rate. Itchy came close, as well as ticklish. Crawling, and twitchy, and shuddering all almost worked as well. Actually, any word that tried to describe the feeling only came close if it denoted a sensation of movement where there shouldn't be any. The feeling, no matter how creepy it might be, was not the focus of the lesson. The mental precision needed to manipulate the micro world of cells and the comparatively macro world of the severed tissue, to merge them together seamlessly, was more than most people could handle. She had been thrust into situations that gave her more than enough chances to grow proficient. She was sure that Knives would pick up on the trick to it faster than she had. He did have that annoying habit of being faster to learn than she had been.

But he didn't. When she broke the link and tried to pass the knife over to him, he merely shook his head. His slightly wide-eyed gaze looked everywhere but at her and she sighed. She flipped the blade in her hand and rapped his knuckles with the pommel. 

"What's your problem? It's only a little pain." He looked away and took his hand from hers. "Look? See? Hardly any mark at all. There won't even be a scar."

"I don't care about scars," he said in a small, tight voice.

"Then what's your problem?" He didn't respond, and she grew more exasperated with each passing second. "You're the one who wanted to know how to do my tricks. This comes next."

"I wanted to learn how you manipulate the environment, not your body. I don't care how you heal," he said hotly, still not quite looking at her.

"Oh, you want to learn how to destroy first, is that it? Or just skip the healing process altogether, and just learn how to kill?"

He didn't respond, but the tightness of his shoulders betrayed him. 

"Fine," she said, and stood up. "We're done."

His head shot up, eyes flashing and finally meeting hers. "You don't make that decision."

"Like hell I don't. I'm not teaching someone how to destroy when they aren't willing to learn how to put things back together again."

"You don't make that decision," he repeated, standing up and looming over her.

Mentally she cursed his height. She hated feeling short, especially when she was angry. And especially when she wasn't short. She glared back, giving it all she had, and was pleased to see him give a little, his head moving back a fraction, and his body not… looming quite so much. Sensing weakness, she stepped forward, finger jabbing into his chest. 

"I make decisions that involve me. Teaching you involves me. Picking up after the mess you're planning on making, well, that involves me, too. And I'm not going to go around, cleaning up after someone who does not comprehend what they are actually destroying!"

"I know exactly what I'm destroying. An infestation of vermin." His voice was colder than she could remember it being lately, and he began looming again. If she had stopped to think things through she might have stopped the argument there, but Kiley had caught her momentum.

"That isn't what I'm saying. Until you know exactly what destruction entails, you will be too free to use it as a weapon."

"Of course I'm going to use it as a weapon," he interrupted. "Why the hell else to you think you're still alive? To teach me how to grow daisies?"

She blanched a little at a thrust that scored, but ignored the pang in her heart to press her point. "There are plenty of ways to exterminate the human race without destroying them. You just like the idea of inflicting pain."

He recoiled from that, and she knew that she had scored on him as well.

"So what are your great ideas?" he shot back, sarcastically. "Tell me, or lie and say you don't want to give me ideas when you have none of your own."

"People die on their own. That's why they make more people. And since they don't make more people through mitosis, if you do something to block fertility the human race will die out on its own in a matter of a few generations. That's one non-destructive solution."

Knives snorted, but considered the idea. "And I'm sure you know how to do that," he said flatly, intrigued despite himself.

"Actually, no. But I'm sure that it would be easy enough for you to bioengineer, back in your ship. So why don't you go away now and leave Ace and I alone?"

"Leave her with you? Don't be mad," he said, but without rancor, as he was absorbed in the new thought.

She looked at him appraisingly. "You mean to tell me, you never thought of biowarfare? You've been plotting to destroy a species for over a hundred years, and you never thought of using germs? What, are you a moron?"

He casually backhanded her face, but the force of the blow was enough to knock her to the ground. She had forgotten how strong he could be, too. That went back on her mental list of this she should never overlook. "You can shut up now," he said, still lost in thought.


	41. Getting through

New chapter!! Yay!! And hopefully I'll get the rest of them in order soon. 

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Her mouth stung, and a hand quickly raised to her lip came back wet with blood. She winced slightly, not so much at the pain but at the fact she was leaking again. A quick glance at Knives showed that he was lost in thought and not paying much attention to her.

Bad move, plant boy.

She spent a moment trying to think of what she could do to him. Her eyes narrowed as she searched for something, anything that would take him out of that musing mental state. She didn't want to let him think too long on germ warfare; there were too many things he could try that she couldn't counteract. Plus, it got dirty quickly, as the germs decided to evolve in ways you didn't predict. Hopefully he would see that on his own, but if he didn't, she'd be sure to point it out.

Just attacking him wasn't a good idea. For one thing, when you are trying to teach someone that violence isn't always the answer… you shouldn't use violence to get your point across. For another, she wasn't entirely sure that she could take him right now. That slap had set her ears ringing, and she was having trouble focusing her eyes. She wiped at the blood by her mouth again and got an idea. In an instant, the idea blossomed into a plan, that turned into action.

She wiped at the blood on her face with the index finger of her right hand, worrying at the wound until her hand was slick with her blood. Then, she looked up, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Knives had turned off to the side a bit, looking off into the desert as he pondered new ideas, dismissing her as a threat. Her eyes narrowed more as she tried to focus. When his head was turned away, just enough, she jumped to her feet and pounced on his back.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and snaked her left arm around his neck. His mouth opened, in shock or to cry out. She didn't care, but was pleased that he had made things easy on her. Her hand grabbed his jaw and held it open as she jammed the bloody fingers of her right hand in. He gagged, a reflex motion as her fingers reached the back of his throat. He twisted, trying to throw her off, but couldn't; he tried to close his mouth but her grip on his jaw was too tight to allow much motion.

She made sure to get her blood all over his mouth, under the tongue that futilely tried to force out the intrusion, up on the roof of his mouth, and scraped behind his teeth. Then she let go and jumped back. The force of her dismount pushed him forward onto the sand, where he gagged and spat, trying to get the hot copper taste out of his mouth and failing.

After a few moments of this, he turned and glared at her. She was still laying where she fell, blinking into the suns and trying to put her head back together.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, somehow managing to stalk as he covered the few feet between them. He loomed over her, blocking the light. She was finally able to make her eyes focus again, and she stared at him as calmly as she could.

"You like the pain of others. I thought you would like a taste of what you dish out."

"That was disgusting." Scorn dripped from the words. Idly, she wondered if he practiced that tone, or if it was native talent.

"Hmm? It's not like you haven't tasted my blood before. Last time, you seemed to like it."

He paused to think a moment. "Last time I did it to annoy you. And to mess with your head."

"And this time I did it to annoy you. And to mess with your head. Dammit, you hit me! And for what, calling you a name? Is that worth violence?"

His eyes stayed cold. "Obviously."

"Is that what you want to teach Ace?" she asked, motioning behind him.

His eyes widened slightly as he turned. The child was standing in the shadow of one of the spires, staring at him, eyes full of hurt and anger. He took a step towards her, but she stepped back. He stopped, unsure of what to do, then turned back towards Kiley.

"Bad example?" he asked sheepishly.

She blinked, both from a bit of shock, and because he had stopped blocking the sun.

"You might think that," she said calmly, recovering quickly. "This is hopefully where you learn that violence isn't the answer to your problems," she said somewhat hopefully, but mostly in jest.

"You use violence all the time," he pointed out as he stepped back and offered her a hand up.

"As a tool, yes. As an answer, no. Violence… it's a scary thing to use too much of it, because it gets quick results. That makes it addictive, and easy to confuse with power. But it's not an answer, only a process, and if you lose sight of that you get into trouble." She grabbed his hand with her right and let him help her up. She knew it was stupid, but she couldn't stop herself from enjoying the feel of his hand on hers, the strength that he used to haul her to her feet. 

He let go and stepped back a pace, face shuttered. She wondered if she had said something wrong, but then he looked at his hand distastefully. She saw that some of her blood had gotten on him. He stared at it for a moment and then shook his head and wandered off to find something to wipe it clean.

She stared after him and wondered what was going through his head. But mostly, she was thankful that he hadn't gone and licked her blood off his hand. That sort of thing creeped her out.


	42. Travelling

Another day, another chapter. But who wants to read about these guys?

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Vash and Meryl walked the streets of December, searching for some trace of Knives. Vash rubbed at the back of his head as Meryl looked searchingly at the buildings around them, her expression intent. 

"I thought it would look… different," she said after a few minutes. "It's been so long since we were here; I thought things would change."

Vash looked around, comparing things in his memory. "Things haven't changed much, have they?" he mused. "Used to be, every time I went through a town they all looked a little different." The lack of change interested him for a moment more before he went back to musing about his brother.

Meryl shot him an exasperated glance. He kept brooding, and she was getting tired of it. Yes, they were going after his brother. Yes, the thought of confronting him again scared her. Yes, she wasn't looking forward to it. But you didn't see her brooding. No, she was just going to go, with Vash, and make his brother behave. Somehow. Without any dying on her part this time. It was a plan, and a good plan, if a little vague.

She tried to suppress a shudder and failed. Vash, who could and did completely ignore her for most of this journey, didn't fail to notice that.

"You don't have to come with me," he said again, starting an argument that he should know by now he won't possibly win.

"You know I'm not going to leave you to face him alone."

"You'll be safer at home."

"What? Waiting to see if you'll come back to me? Not being there to help you if things go wrong? Look where that got Millie," she countered. They both fell silent for a moment, in memory.

Vash picked up the thread of the argument again. "If you're there, he'll try to use you against me. Just like before, and just like Legato."

"He hasn't succeeded yet."

"So we keep giving him chances? I don't want to gamble with your life, Meryl."

She glared at him. "You aren't doing anything with my life. I am. It's my decision to accompany you. It's my decision to go with you into trouble. I'm an adult; I get to make these sorts of choices."

"I just don't want to see you get hurt. It would kill me, inside."

She lifted a hand and caressed his cheek. "It would kill me if I let you go off and you never came back. I'm not as strong as Millie. Anyway, what part of 'death do we part' was unclear?" Her hand stayed soft on his face for a moment more, then she pinched it. "Besides, I'm not letting you go off on your own. You start flirting with every pretty little thing as soon as my back is turned. That's not happening this time, buster."

"I'm yours," he sighed, resigned, rubbing his cheek where she had pinched it.

"That's right. All mine," she affirmed, taking the lead to wherever they might end up. 

Vash contemplated ducking into an alley and leaving her behind, of looking for his brother on his own, but he discarded the notion. She was too good at tracking him down. Even though she might be out of practice, and he might get away with it, maybe, the odds weren't good enough for him to risk it. Instead, he followed behind, watching her as she broke through the crowds on the sidewalk. 

He loved watching her. Most people walked around crowds when they wanted to move faster. They would weave in and out of the people before them, darting into openings and taking advantage of gaps in the crowd. Meryl merely strode forward and expected people to get out of her way. Maybe it was because of her size, but she was always so determined to make people give way for her. 

He trailed along in her wake and sighed. He wished he knew what his brother was doing. Maybe he had a good reason, a safe reason for having left his ship. Maybe there was an innocent explanation for everything. But, probably not. 

And he had found another plant. He wished he knew how that had happened. He had almost given up hope of ever seeing another plant like him and his brother, and now there was one. And he had her. He wondered what he was teaching her; the evils of humanity? How all people were nothing more than parasites to be exterminated? Probably.

He sighed again, looking at the crowd of people, some laughing and smiling, most merely traveling from one place to another, minds on something other than what they saw before them. How could he not find them fascinating? There were so many lives, so many stories, so much to enjoy about people. Knives could never look past their propensity for cruelty, their ability to ignore the pain they can inflict on others.

But not all of them were cruel. And they could all be taught, be trained to be decent. Very few were cruel just for the sport of it, but instead passed along the pain that they felt themselves. If he could only take away their pain, then maybe… 

He knew it was a foolish dream, but he still tried. Maybe he couldn't make a difference in everyone's life, but he could try. Maybe he couldn't make everyone's pain go away, but he could try. After all, most of this pain was his fault in the first place. He was the one who could have stopped Knives, back in the beginning, back before the fall. If only he had paid attention, had seen what his brother's pain drove him to, if he could only have helped Knives then, none of this struggle would have happened. 

He sighed again and shook his head. Dwelling on the past didn't change the present. He needed to stop his brother's latest scheme, whatever it might be. He just wished that he could have lived with Meryl a while longer. Like forever. That would have been nice. 


	43. Feeling sick

You guys… are just going to have to wait. *evil author laugh*

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Kiley settled back in the sand and closed her eyes. She felt slightly sick to her stomach, and her head still ached a bit from the force of the blow. The light from the suns beat down on her closed eyelids, and she waited for her stomach to calm somewhat before opening them.

Or at least, that was her plan. A firm toe nudging her unprotected side made her open her eyes again. She squinted up into the light and looked at Knives. 

"What?" she asked waspishly. 

"You are supposed to be teaching me now."

She closed her eyes again and tried to ignore him.

He nudged her ribs, slightly harder. "I'm waiting."

"That's nice." She kept her eyes closed and cleared her ears a few times in an effort to keep her food where it belonged.

She heard him lean down beside her. "I'm not very patient," was whispered in her ear. His warm breath tickled the hair by her ear, and she grimaced and turned her head away slightly.

"I know that, Knives. It's a little obvious." 

One hand reached out and pushed her hair behind her ear. "Then get up." His fingers traced the line of her chin, and she found herself clenching her jaw tightly.

"I don't feel like it."

One finger traced the outline of her lips. "I don't care if you feel like it or not. Just do it."

Her lips tightened. She opened them to speak, but he laid his finger across them, stilling her response. "I'm not going to take 'no' for an answer."

She opened her eyes. His face was close, his eyes bright with something she didn't want to put a name to. They peered intently into hers, looking for something. He must have thought he found it, because he settled back on his heels and looked smug.

"Now get up," he ordered, lifting his finger from her lips.

"No." She closed her eyes again, as squinting into the light had set her head pounding.

His hand reached back and grabbed her jaw. "Yes," he demanded softly.

She wished for a moment that she could open her eyes, because right now she wanted to do nothing more than glare at him. "I'm not saying no to be difficult," she ground out through a jaw he wouldn't allow to move. "I feel like crap; I'm not teaching you today."

His hand left her jaw and pressed against her forehead. His touch was warm and gentle, surprisingly so after the firm grip on her jaw. "You don't feel feverish," he pronounced after a moment.

"Thanks, doc. I feel so much better now," she said sarcastically, then swallowed quickly a few times.

He wasn't amused. "Then what's wrong with you?" His tone was petulant, and he took his hand away.

"Oh, gee, let's think back a few minutes here. Oh yeah, you hit me."

"So?"

"So you damn near gave me a concussion. My head hurts, my stomach is rebelling, and I don't feel like doing much of anything for awhile except sitting here and feeling crappy."

"Oh. Sorry."

She thought over the apology for a split second. "No you're not. If you were remotely sorry you would have said so before now. What you are is upset that I can't do what you want me to do."

She heard him shift on the sand beside her, but he said nothing. 

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said, very softly. 

Her eyes closed more tightly. "You hit me hard enough to knock me down. Where does not intending to hurt me enter that picture?"

He started to stroke the hair on her forehead, pushing it off her brow. "I didn't think you could get hurt."

She snorted. "Of course I can. Most of the time I just ignore it. But I don't have to, today. I can sit here, in the sand, with my eyes closed, and revel in the luxury of getting to feel like crap."

"I'm sorry." He scooted closer and settled into the sand, crossing his legs and moving her head into his lap. He continued to play with her hair, fingers combing through it softly. 

Surprised, she opened her eyes. He looked down at her, no concern in his eyes, but no disgust, either. She couldn't read him, and it worried her. Slightly. "What are you doing now?" 

"I have you at my mercy." He grinned down at her, a little boy's grin.

She groaned. "You have no mercy. I'm screwed."

"Maybe." He grinned wider, no longer looking like a child.

She closed her eyes again. "Pity the poor sick girl?" she tried.

"Nope. But I'll quit pestering you for a few minutes."

"I'll take what I can get." She cleared her ears again and tried to relax. The attempt seemed doomed to failure; having her head in his lap was too weird. She kept waiting for the attack that didn't come, tension keeping her from resting. He kept playing with her hair, rolling the strands between his fingers and smoothing it away from her face. The motions, the repetitive nature of the actions, were very soothing, and finally she was able to convince her instincts that it was all right to sleep. 

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Knives looked down at the unguarded visage of the sleeping woman in his lap.

Heh. He never thought this would happen. Him, being comforting. For a human. 

Foolishness.

But… he felt a bit guilty. Not too guilty; it was her fault he had hit her. But, a little guilty. He had forgotten that she was breakable, merely human. Of course, that was her fault, too, but he should keep these sorts of things in mind. At least, he should keep them in mind while she was still useful.

He stroked her hair, enjoying the feel of it under his fingers. Soft, silky, but unfortunately too short. There was hardly enough of it to run his fingers through, and not nearly enough to play with. It seemed to relax her, though, and the sooner she felt better, the sooner she would be worth his time again.


	44. Messing up waking up

There are still things that need to be said before what all y'all want to read gets written.

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She lingered in that place between sleep and wakefulness, that soft, fuzzy borderland between the real and the imagined. She was more relaxed then she could ever remember being, completely at ease with were she was. She felt happy, good, and loved. Her heart followed that feeling, searching for the love she felt. 

Before her, encircled in her arms, love radiated towards her. She soaked up that feeling, reveling in it, luxuriating in it, and returning it. For the moment she didn't care that she was an empath, that she was feeling things that she really wasn't entitled to. Rationality didn't exist where she was; she couldn't argue herself out of feeling emotions that perhaps weren't hers to feel. Instead, she just felt loved.

She expanded on the feeling, close contact allowing her to return the emotions she felt. The person in her arms could feel her return the love she sensed. As she began to reveal her feelings, the love from the person in her arms increased, a circle of happiness shared, shared and amplified. 

But as she used her empathy, she began to sense a presence at her back that wasn't happy. There was a heart there that loved, and loved deeply, but the love was choked off, strangled away from being an everyday emotion. The heart felt a need to be loved, but also as if it would never see its need resolved. 

Her heart ached to feel such pain, especially contrasted with what she personally felt. She grabbed the heart behind her and linked it into the love that she and the person in her arms shared. Slowly the ache she sensed eased, which helped her feel happy again, but the blockage that the person had put over his heart bothered her. Slowly she worked at it, easing it away bit by bit until she was able to coax some feeling into the gestalt she had started. 

Love and happiness flowed between the three of them She tried to ease herself back into that place between day and night, but failed. Working at that blockage had woken her too much, and the cavalcade of thoughts mounted until she could no longer even pretend to be asleep. As she woke, she eased out of the link, slowly gaining control of her ability once more, remembering that she wasn't supposed to go around messing with other people's hearts.

She opened her eyes, momentarily disoriented. She blinked a few times, bringing her vision into focus. Looking down at the child nestled in her arms, she puzzled over who she might be for a moment before remembering. Ace. A smile teased about her lips as she looked down at the sleeping girl. Her childhood must have been horrible before she had rescued her, but the child was still able to be full of such love. It was a pleasure and a treat to get to know her, to be close to her. It was an honor to be loved by her.

She rolled her neck a little, feeling someone's arm beneath her head. Nestling back a little further into the arms that encircled her, she smiled, remembering the love she had coaxed awake. Then she remembered just who it was behind her.

She tensed. Then she panicked. Incoherent thought overwhelmed her mind.

What did she just do? 

Knives? She just messed with Knives? Oh, o, o, o, uh-oh. 

She was in so much trouble. 

Maybe he won't mind.

Maybe he'll stay asleep. 

Maybe the ground will swallow me now.

She felt him move behind her, a slow stretch, then he pulled her closer. His arm tightened around her waist, and she wished that there was some way she could take back what she had done. He was going to be so pissed when he woke up.

She tried to relax, tried to regain some shred of composure, but failed miserably. Her heart raced, pounding in her ears, threatening to escape out her throat. 

He mumbled something sleepily in her ear, and finally she couldn't take anymore. She flew out of his arms, pushing Ace out of her arms as she ran and hid behind the closest spire. Looking out over the desert, looking towards the setting suns, she contemplated running for her life.

A hand came down on her shoulder and she flinched. 

"What's wrong?" he asked, the concern in his voice making her cringe.

"I screwed up; I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry…" She rambled, making no sense.

His hand tightened and his voice grew a little colder. "What did you do?" he asked, cutting over her babbled and incoherent apologies.

"…I was sleeping, I'm sorry." She finally fell silent and buried her head in her hands. 

He shook her. "What did you do?"

"I, I, I…" she stuttered, then fell silent. "I warned you. I told you I'm an empath."

"What did you do?" he repeated as she fell silent again. He grabbed her chin and forced her to look him in the eyes. "Tell me."

"I sort was sleeping and was feeling love because Ace was in my arms and she was just radiating it and then I felt you behind me and you were so sad and I didn't like feeling the sadness behind me so I sort of let your heart know that we loved you but then that wasn't enough and I made it so we could feel you loving us too and I'm sorry I screwed up and I didn't mean to and I was sleeping." She closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see his reaction.

"You…played around with my emotions."

She tried to nod, but his hand was still on her chin. "I'm sorry. I didn't do it to be malicious or anything. It was an accident."

"So, I woke up feeling better then I have in years, and all you have to say is that it was an accident?"

His voice gave her no clues, so she cautiously opened one eye and tried to read his expression. 

He was laughing at her!

Suddenly she found herself glaring. "It's not funny!" she ground out, enraged at his reaction.

"Of course it is. What, were you expecting me to bite your head off? I woke up happy; big deal. If you're worried about making me feel love, don't. I am perfectly capable of ignoring such a weak little emotion." He turned and walked back into the oasis, shaking his head.

Kiley glared at his back, but her heart slowly inched back to its proper place. 

Men.


	45. Feeling good

Ugh. Colds suck and make it hard to write.

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Knives left Kiley behind and went over to Ace. He picked her up in a hug, and was pleased to feel her arms snake around his neck. He held her, shifting her to rest on his hip as he buried his face in her hair. He did feel different. This was easier for him then it had been, holding her and just letting his emotions be felt. Until he had woken up, until she pointed out that she had done something to him, he hadn't quite realized that he had locked his heart away. He had known that things had changed from when he was a child; he wasn't a simpleton. He just hadn't noticed how much things had begun to differ.

He knew how it had started. Humans were easy for him to kill; their deaths didn't bother his conscience one whit. Fighting against his brother had been hard. He knew that there was a chance that Vash would die. As long as they both fought, there was that chance. The humans didn't deserve his brother's protection, but as long as they battled, there was the possibility that his brother would die at his hand. Maybe not at his hand exactly, but perhaps in one of his schemes. A slim possibility, to be sure, but one that existed all the same. His brother's death, him causing his brother's death, that would destroy him. And if he could not continue the fight, the humans would win.

He couldn't fight his brother and love him at the same time. The forces of necessity that drove him, that moved him at cross-purposes with Vash, they pulled at his soul. The humans need to die. The plants must be saved. He couldn't fight his brother and love him at the same time. He just couldn't. Slowly, he just stopped feeling much of anything. Anything soft, anything that distracted him from his goal. He sent someone to watch over his brother, to keep him safe while he distracted him, but that was as far as he could go. Without the distraction of those feelings his resolve firmed. The humans would die.

Now? Now he remembered those emotions he had forgotten. His resolve was still firm; these emotions would not sway him from his goal. He was strong enough to deal with them now. His goals were worthy; he would not be swayed from his course by feelings. But it was nice to have them back. A small smile flitted across his lips. That woman had done him a favor, not that she thought so.

He dropped an absent kiss on Ace's head as he pondered the picture she had presented. She had looked so small, curled up in a ball at the base of the spire. The late afternoon sun had painted golden glints in her hair, and she had looked almost pretty in her misery. She was always so calm, collected. He had never seen her flustered before. It was almost cute, and actually comforting. She was merely human after all. For a while he had wondered if she ever did anything wrong.

He frowned. No human was ever perfect. He knew that her drive towards perfection was a part of her compensation for the sins of her past. Every time she failed, she must relive the feelings of shame that accompanied her memories of her youth. So right now, she must be feeling terrible. 

Shifting Ace from one hip to the other, he grinned. Good. Guilt made people much more malleable. He walked back to where he had left her, and was comforted by the look of shame he caught on Kiley's face.

"Get up," he commanded, his voice cold. Ace looked at him oddly, and he turned his head slightly and dropped her a wink where Kiley couldn't see. 

The woman looked at him mulishly, and he sighed. "Up," he said again, nudging her with his foot. She looked like she was contemplating dumping him on his rear, but dismissed the idea when she looked at Ace. Ah. Protected by her love for the child. He would have to remember that. 

Instead her brows drew together, and she stood, glaring at him as she found her feet. She stood with her back pressed against the spire, and he couldn't tell if she was supporting herself or making sure her back was covered. Maybe it was both.

He looked at her, his expression giving nothing away. Her eyes met his, and he could see that she was daring him to do something, to say something. She must have used the time when he was picking up Ace to develop a few arguments. He wasn't going to let her use any of them.

A thought passed through his mind, and he decided to act upon it. He let his gaze travel down from her eyes, moving across her entire body, lingering on her chest and hips as he reached them. A small, cold smile flitted across his lips as his gaze moved back up her body, and as he reached her face again he saw that it was beet red. Good.

"That's payback for the hotel." He watched recognition cross her face her mouth open to protest, but not find words. He continued before she could say anything.

"And this is what you get for messing with my emotions." He leaned in close and kissed her, a deep, lingering kiss that took full advantage of her slightly parted mouth. She was tense at first, but relaxed into it before he finished. Heh. He was a good kisser. He lifted his lips from hers with a smile, pleased at her response. Then he draped his right arm over her shoulder, pulling her into a tight hug. Ace grabbed her other shoulder and kissed her cheek. She tensed, then relaxed slightly and tentatively responded to them both.

The look of shock on her face was priceless, fully worth the kiss. He chuckled, passed Ace into her arms, and walked back into the oasis.

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A/N: I have a little group thingie now. Come, join! Talk with other people who read this fic! Speculate on what I'm going to do next!! Theorize!! And stuff like that… Anyway, it's here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CymberleahsFics/ Go!! Now!! 


	46. Explaining life

I hate being sick. I have no motivation.

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Kiley blinked hard a few times, trying to return the world to one that made sense. Failing, she sat down again, absently arranging Ace on her lap while her mind whirled. The girl leaned her head on her shoulder, and Kiley absently stroked her hair. 

*He likes you.* The whisper-soft voice tentatively entered her mind.

Her hand paused for a moment, then continued to play with Ace's hair.

"Like a pet, maybe. Or a toy."

*Isn't that enough?*

The twist to Kiley's lips could almost be called a smile. "No, not really. I'm not a pet or a toy, and it peeves me to be treated like one."

*You aren't his equal.*

"Or yours, is that it?" She sighed. "Don't answer. I don't want to know." 

They fell silent. Kiley watched the suns finish setting, lost in her thoughts. "I want to be treated like a fellow sentient being. Maybe I'm not as smart, or as fast, or as perfect as a plant, but that doesn't mean I'm not smart, or fast. I am capable of comprehending the sublime and the surreal, and just because I'm not a plant doesn't mean I'm stupid. There are a lot of things I can do better than you or him."

*You have knowledge. We have talent*

"I have knowledge, some talent, and a great deal more experience then either of you will ever have."

Ace shrugged dismissively. *You still can't be our equal. It's not humanly possible.*

"I guess. Can't say that I agree with you, but I'm not going to argue the point."

Ace turned and looked at her. *Plants were engineered to be better than humans on every level. You can't deny that.*

"I'm not denying that."

She looked confused. *Then how can you begin to imagine we could be equals?*

"Because I don't confuse ability and competence. Just because you can be better than me at something, or at everything, doesn't make you a fundamentally better person than I am. I base equality in the heart, not in the mind or the body."

*That's ridiculous.*

"You can think so, if you like."

A beat, and another. *You aren't going to try to defend your position?*

"Nope. You're a bright young thing; you'll spend some time trying to figure me out. You might even be able to do it. But I'd rather you think on my point of view for a while then just sit here and preach to you."

*Hmph.* She radiated affront, and Kiley laughed.

"This way I know you're thinking, and not just listening."

*I'm always thinking.*

"I know you are." They sat there and watched the stars come out for awhile.

*I thought you would be surprised.*

"Hmm? Oh, that you finally decided to talk with me? I was, a bit. Not too much, though."

*Even though I'm not really talking?* 

"I figure you will in your own time. No use me pushing at you."

*I love you.*

"I love you, too. And as a friend, not a pet."

Ace stayed silent. 

"That's ok. I'm not offended, or at least not entirely. You're young, and prideful. It's one of the sins of youth. You'll grow out of it."

*What if I don't want to?*

"Then you'll spend your entire life less than what you could be."

*But if I am who I want to be already, why would I feel bad about not changing?*

Kiley smiled down at her. "Five months old and you already know everything? Life is growing and changing, not finding a comfortable niche and stagnating."

*Change hurts.*

"Sometimes. It's never comfortable, but it's necessary."

*I don't want things to change.* She snuggled closer into Kiley's lap, and buried her face in her chest.

"Unfortunately, life doesn't care about our wants. We can only take what comes and try to make the best of it."

*Or be the ones in control of what changes.*

Kiley shook her head. "That's a myth. There is no control. There is acceptance and there is struggle."

*Knives is in control.*

"Of what?"

*The planet.*

"That's what he thinks. Of course, he's the one who keeps spending time alone in his little ship."

*That's Vash's fault.*

"So he thinks."

*You don't?*

"I think that Knives tries to take a little too much on himself, then blames others when he can't carry the load."

*He could have done it.*

"You are allowed your opinion."

Ace sulked, and squirmed her way out of Kiley's arms.

*You're just jealous,* she said, sticking her tongue out.

"Of course I am. Who wouldn't be jealous of an insane megalomaniac who was defeated by his pacifist brother?"

*You're jealous of me, too. You wish you were a plant.*

"Actually, I can't think of anything I really want less."

Ace paused, then peered at her. "What do you mean?" she asked softly. "Don't you love me?"

"Of course I do. But all you plants," she said, waving a hand expansively, "have some of the biggest problems. If it's not angst here, it's angst there… you all seem constitutionally unable to live each day as it comes. Why would I want to be like that?"

Ace poked Kiley's stomach. *You have angst.*

"No one's perfect. Besides, I'm working on decreasing mine. The rest of you hold it closer than a lover, and take it personally when someone else doesn't take it as seriously as you do."

Tears formed in her eyes. *You're making fun of me.*

"No I'm not. Well, not very much. You can take a little teasing, right?"

Ace shook her head no. 

"Sorry. My mistake. Come here." She held her arms open. Ace eyed her suspiciously, then entered the hug. 

"You're still young; no one expects you to know everything. And I'm not mocking you, or your pain. Life hurts, I know that as well as anyone. It's what we do when we get hurt that defines us as people, anyone as people, plant or human. I don't expect you to understand what I'm saying, but that doesn't mean I don't love you." She squeezed her once more, then let her go. 

Ace looked at her searchingly for a moment, then ran back into the oasis. Kiley looked up at the stars and wondered just how she had ended up here.

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A/N: Reminder, go here! And talk about my fic. If you feel like it…

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CymberleahsFics/


	47. Ego trip

I'm still sick, and I think DayQuil is messing with my head…

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Kiley sat outside until after full dark. One moon was already high in the sky, but not high enough to penetrate the shadow surrounding her. The desert slowly lightened as the other moons rose, an almost imperceptible brightening, a slow expansion of the horizon. It was too bad her mood stayed dark. She grabbed a handful of pebbles from the base of the spire, and amused herself by seeing how far she could toss them. She imagined that each one was a problem, bidding each trouble a fond farewell before chucking them out into the darkness as hard as she could.

She ran out of troubles before she ran out of rocks, so she merely rolled the last three between her fingers for a few minutes before letting them fall to the sand at her side. She felt useless here. Worse, she didn't even know if she could find a purpose. For years, people had either been telling her exactly what to do or she had a goal to strive towards. Kill this person? Ok. Save this one? All right. Try to enter politics and save the world? That was a good goal. Wander around aimlessly on a dusty desert world, where the only people you know treat you like some sort of talking dog? She just wasn't mentally equipped to handle this.

She had been powerful, strong, feared. Now, she was no one. Of course, she had been hated, despised, and betrayed, so why did she find herself wishing she was back there? Was she so driven by ego that she needed to be famous, infamous? Could she not just sit, and simply be herself?

Of course not. No one gets to just sit around simply being. How many people run around, working themselves to the bone, never having the time to examine their lives, let alone their souls? She knew that time to sit and think was an unappreciated luxury. It was just that she found as she examined herself, her life, that she really didn't like herself much. And how was that for a depressing thought? She gets a new chance, a new life, and what does she do? The same crap that messed up her life in the first place. 

She rubbed her hands down her legs, forcing herself to not make fists. She should know better. She should just leave.

Maybe she liked Knives. Maybe she more than liked him. So what? She knew what abusive relationships were like, had lived through her fair share of them. Loving Knives was a recipe for pain. He was a bastard, cold, used to getting his own way, and too much like her. Of course, she wasn't a racist, but that was really just the icing on the cake. Even if he could get past the fact that she wasn't a plant they still wouldn't make a good couple.

A hand descended on her shoulder and she jumped. 

"Lost in thought?" asked Knives as he sat down beside her.

"Something like that."

"You really confused the girl. She's sitting over there thinking about what you said."

"Good." Terse. Short. Maybe he would get the hint and leave.

"Why is it so hard for you to admit that we are superior?"

"Probably because you and I have different definitions of superior."

He stretched his legs out before him. "Humans can do nothing even half as well as a plant," he said easily.

"See? You confuse potential with actions, too. I swear, you are either dense, or have an ego bigger than a elephant."

"Hmm? Oh. Yes. They were big?" he muttered. 

"Huge. Enormous. Like your ego."

He punched her shoulder lightly. "It's not ego when it's true."

She scooted out of arms reach. "But it's not true. So what you if you can do things better than humans? What have you actually done? Killed millions? Is that something to take pride in? What has your brother done? Drifted across the face of the planet, touching lightly on people's lives before moving on, a ghost that barely touches anyone through time? Any accomplishments you're particularly proud of, outside of murder and mayhem?"

He paused to think. "I'm rather proud of my murder and mayhem, actually. It was well orchestrated. A work of art."

"It was death and destruction. How is that supposed to make you superior to people who spend their entire lives striving to make a positive difference in this world?"

"Have you met many of these people who want to make a positive difference?" His tone mocked her as he repeated her words.

"Yes. I admit, most people don't try to make a difference. Most people just live their lives hoping for the best and dealing with whatever happens. But you're still not understanding my perspective. How is a human who strives to make life better, inferior to a monster who kills and destroys?"

He tensed. "I am not a monster."

"No? Millions Knives, destroyer of lives."

"I am a superior being."

"You're repeating yourself. I'm not saying you're a monster because you're a plant; I'm saying that you, Knives, the soul inhabiting that body of which you are so fond, you, the soul directing the mind that is so quick and so capable, you, Knives, are a monster."

"And you aren't?"

"I…I don't know what I am," she muttered, then raised her voice to continue. "I know I don't want to be a monster, but then I find myself acting in ways I'd rather not. I'm trying to be a better person. You don't even care."

"So, you believe that good deeds make you superior."

"I believe that a person who does the right thing is better than a person who deliberately causes harm. To anyone, or anything, living or dead."

"Saving my race is not an evil thing."

"I never said it was."

"You just called me a monster!"

"Your actions give you that name. You would destroy in the name of justice, but in the end, you have still destroyed."

"You were the assassin," he pointed out petulantly.

"Yes, yes I was," she agreed easily. "But I'm not anymore. You're still looking at genocide as an acceptable way to save your people."

"Humans are a plague. Killing you is a service to the universe."

"Nice to know that your views are set in stone. Talking to you? Always a pleasure." She stood up and brushed sand off her pants, preparing to go. Knives rolled over and grabbed her leg. "What?" she asked, irritated and trying to not show it.

"You're leaving so soon?"

"I can only take so many "vermins" and "plagues" before I want to go."

"I'll stop."

"You won't stop thinking it."

"Does that matter so much?"

She thought a moment, then sat down. "What do you want?" she asked flatly.

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	48. Safe conversation topics

Ah. Feeling better now.

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Knives looked over at her, at the soft outline of her profile, half-lost in the shadow. "I just thought we could talk."

"About what?"

"Things. Non-specific things. Safe things."

"I don't know that there are any safe topics of conversation right now. I'm a little pissy."

"I noticed," he said, grinning. She glared at him, pushing her hair out of her eyes. 

"Ugh. I need to cut it," she said, pulling lightly on a few strands and grimacing at their length.

"Why? Your hair is pretty. I like how it's light on top and dark beneath. Plus, it's very soft. My hair is all stiff and spiky. Yours, and Ace's, you both have such soft hair."

"I hate long hair."

Knives blinked. "It's maybe three inches long. I'd still call that short."

"It gets in my eyes," she complained.

"So just cut the front part."

She shrugged, uncomfortable. "I hate the feel of hair on my head. It's a long, sad, boring story."

"So let's hear it."

She looked at him oddly. "Did I mention boring?"

"Do you want to look for another topic of conversation?"

"Sure. Um." She thought a moment. "Why do you wear your hair the same way? I mean, have you changed the style at all in 150 years?"

He looked puzzled. "It's easy to take care of like this. Should I change it; does it look odd?" He ran a hand through his hair, wondering if there was something wrong with it.

"You never have the urge to do something different with it?"

He thought for a moment. "No. Should I?"

"Men." The word was laced more with humor than scorn this time. She fell silent.

"So why do you like your hair to be so short?" he prompted after a moment.

She sighed. "You really want to hear this story, don't you?"

At his nod she shrugged her shoulders, then looked out to her left as she began her story.

"When I was in school, in my last year, my stepfather had taken to beating me severely. One day, I could feel one of the half healed welts on my back split open as I sat in class."

"I knew that it was merely a matter of seconds before the blood seeped through the shirt I was wearing. If anyone saw it, they might question just what was going on behind the closed doors of his house. And if that happened, I would definitely pay for it for months."

"My hair was very long, and as was the required style, it was piled in a bun on my head. I carefully reached up and let it down to cover my back, but that got me in a different sort of trouble. The teacher couldn't get me to put it back up, and school rules said she wasn't allowed to touch me. So, she pulled me out of class and into her office and called my father out of his class to discipline me. Then she left, sure that he would fix the problem."

"He came into the room, full of rage at the damage I was causing to his reputation. He yanked my hair back up into a bun, then saw what it was hiding. He slapped my face a few times, as I had obviously tried to make my back bleed. Then he shooed me back to my class, where everyone assumed he had beaten me for my stubbornness. No one noticed that the blood on my shirt wasn't fresh anymore."

"So, end result, in my mind, long hair is the same as needing to hide something. I hate it."

Knives stayed silent, and Kiley kept her face turned away. He reached out his hand and smoothed her hair away from her brow. "You don't like hiding anything, do you?"

"No, not really," she admitted, turning her head into the caress. "I figure that hiding is mostly the same as lying. And both of them are just admitting that you aren't strong enough to deal with the problems that the truth brings."

"And you pride yourself on being strong. Don't you get tired sometimes?"

"Of course I do. Sometimes, I hate having to be strong. But it's better to deal with what life throws you then it is to sit and let it roll you over. Don't you ever get tired?"

"I suppose I do," he said, shrugging.

"But you deal with it. Why should I be any different?"

Knives bit his tongue on the obvious answer, then tried to see if he could phrase it in some way that wouldn't get him into trouble. "Didn't you ever have anyone willing to help you through the tough times?"

"What? Are you asking if I had a guy to take care of me?"

He was glad the shadow hid his blush.

"I was married. Once. To someone I thought would be there for me when things got hard. I mean, that's why you get married, right? Well, when things turned sour in my life, he headed the line of people who betrayed me. Nothing like having your lover toss you out the back of an airplane to fall into the hands of your enemies that sours you on a relationship."

"He did that?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yup. In his defense, I had never told him that I used to be an assassin. And, with me out of the way, he was the man to head the Parameds. So it wasn't like he didn't have some perfectly good reasons to let me fall. But it did end up reaffirming my long held notion that I need to be strong enough to look out for myself."

"Do you hate him now?" 

"On one level I do. The very hurt part of me that once trusted him. But mostly… he was looking out for his best interests. They just didn't happen to include me. I can't expect that people are going to act outside of their best interests."

"So you agree, that humans are self serving creatures."

She shot him an amused glance. "Anything that lives is a self-serving creature. No, my mistake was thinking that since I loved him, he would ignore his best interests because he loved me, too. I was naïve."

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	49. Cliches

*thinks hard* You know… I've been posting this fic for a while now. I miss posting once every 13 days. That's not bad….

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"I'm not self-serving," protested Knives.

She straightened up. "You're not," she said flatly, then laughed.

"What?"

She snickered. "You want to keep this conversation light? Just drop that chain of thought, ok?"

He grumbled a bit, but she didn't catch any words. He shifted again, ending up a little closer to her. "You were married?" 

"Yup. Seven years. You think you know a guy, think he loves you, then you find you are horribly, horribly wrong." She sighed.

Knives frowned a little, puzzled. "How old are you?"

She laughed a little. "You know, with the torture and death and wandering in the desert and all I've lost track of time a little. I think I was fifty-seven when I died, but I might be fifty-eight now. Might not."

He looked over at her, surprised. "That old? I thought you were younger."

"Do you think I'd be this smart any younger?"

"Actually, I think you're just full of crap."

"Ancient crap, I'll have you know." She chuckled.

"Fifty-eight. Huh," he mused.

"Yup."

"You don't look that old."

"No, I don't, do I? Funny story, that. I'm missing a few scars, too. I don't think this is the same body I was born in. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but it's one of those concepts that weirds me out when I think about it."

He thought for a moment. "So, you were fifty-seven and still going out on missions? Weren't you getting a little old for that sort of thing?"

"No. I'm a Genalt. Basic life span of a hundred fifty years. My late fifties and I was still in my prime. Am still in my prime. Am re-primed?" She shrugged, letting semantics lie.

"Amazing."

"Isn't it? Amazing is one of those scary words, especially when people start using it to describe you."

"You don't want to be amazing?"

"I'd rather be ignored. Too many people notice you, then want something from you, then your life stops being your own."

"You sound bitter."

"Me? I try not to. Bitter is a waste of time. Much like most people's version of hate. Wasted emotions."

"You think hate is a wasted emotion?"

"For most people, yes. They go around saying, I hate this, I hate that, when what they really mean is that they don't like it. I say, if you're going to hate something, you should hate it with such depth of emotion that makes any other feeling pale in comparison. Hate should be pure, sweet, deep, and above all else, justified."

"You've thought much about this. I assume you hate someone. Your husband?"

"I don't hate him. Pity him, loathe him, but not hate. He isn't worthy of my hate. No, I hate my stepfather." Her voice twisted on the word, and Knives felt a chill. 

"Why him, and not your husband?"

"My husband had his reasons for what he did. My stepfather," she controlled her voice better this time, "hurt me, and continued to destroy my life merely because he could. He enjoyed having power over me, and contriving situations where he could hurt me, merely because my pain brought him intense pleasure." She fell silent again, peering at her toes intently.

Knives draped one arm over her shoulder, then hugged her close. She tensed, then relaxed into the comforting embrace. She sighed. "I know I shouldn't let him bother me anymore. He isn't here, he can't hurt me anymore. But some hatreds are too difficult to let go of that easily. Sometimes pain runs too deep."

"That's quite true," he agreed. 

They sat together silently for a few minutes. The first moon crested the top of the spire, sending a soft silvery light down upon their heads. 

"The desert is pretty when it's night," she said after a few moments of looking out across the sands.

"It can be," agreed Knives easily. "It looks less deadly."

"Hmm," she said, then punched him lightly. "Like you."

He looked down on her. "Like you, too."

She sighed. "Deadly beauty. What a cliché, and yet… sometimes even clichés can come true."

"Like the cliché of the evil villain who throws over his ways for love?"

"I like that cliché. I don't think it will happen, but it would be nice if it could."

"You don't believe that love conquers all?"

"I'm not sure I even believe in love. If it existed, don't you think I'd have some sense of it by now?"

"Ace loves you. That much is obvious."

"Sure. And I love her too. But… is that all there is to love? A joy in their company and a willingness to die for them? I think I've loved a lot of people, but I'm tired of no one loving me back. Ugh. Don't listen to me; I'm all whiny tonight."

"It's not an unreasonable request, to be loved."

"You'd think that. But experience shows that love doesn't show up all that often." Her mouth twisted wryly. "I think we should leave the pity party before I get depressed again."

"So we go back to the discussion of clichés? I think we were talking about villains."

"And love still." She sighed again. "I don't believe in villains, anyway."

He shifted, pulling her a little closer. "Really?"

"Nope. It's a curse; I can almost always see both sides to an argument. I can't just look at someone and say, 'Look, he's totally evil and must be stopped!' I look at him and think, 'Hmm. He has a reason to act like an asshole. Let's address the problem, and then maybe he won't feel compelled to be an asshole.'"

"Does it work?"

"Every now and then. Some people are just too messed up. Most of those are power-hungry bastards who don't care about the pain they cause others. Other problems don't really have answers. But I still don't believe in villains. It's too easy a category to abuse."

"And here I was, thinking I got to be your villain."

"I can think of better things for you to be."

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AN: Group. Polls. Much fun. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CymberleahsFics/


	50. Hot night

You've waited a long time for this. I'm pretty sure it's still PG-13, too.

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She shifted her head on his shoulder until she was grinning up at him.

"And what sort of better things might those be?" he asked archly, grinning back at her.

"You could be my butterfly." Her eyes glinted in the darkness.

"Yours?"

"Well… yes. I don't feel like sharing right now."

"I feel much the same."

"You want to be my butterfly?" she asked with bright eagerness, lifting her head slightly from his shoulder.

"I don't feel like sharing."

"Ah," she said, dropping her head back down.

"What else do you want me to be?"

"Hmm. Let me think. You could be my… headache. No, wait, you already have given me enough of those."

"Don't ruin the mood by getting serious," he teased.

"Ooh, sorry. You could be my breakfast."

"What?"

"Yummy enough to eat in the morning."

"Oh. That isn't a bad thing."

"So you'll be my breakfast?"

"Hmm. I'll have to think about that. What happens after you eat me?"

"You're awfully big. I think you'll be more than one meal."

"But what happens when I'm all gone?"

"You worry about that? I think I'll savor you for a very long time."

"I'm savorable?"

"Oh, absolutely. Every drop."

"Then I guess I could be persuaded to be your breakfast."

"Really?" She grinned, then placed a quick kiss on his nose. "I'll start in the morning."

He looked overhead, checking the position of the moons.

"What are you doing?" she asked as he looked into the sky.

"Seeing how long it is until midnight."

"How long?"

"Too long. Hours yet."

"Well, then, maybe you can be a midnight snack, too."

"You want to eat me more than once? I won't last as long."

"Depends on how big a bite I take."

"Savorable?"

"Very."

She snuggled closer, draping her arm around his waist. Daring much, she let her hand fall on his thigh. Her heart beat faster when he let it stay.

Knives felt the fluttering of her pulse, and found his beating faster as well. Surely, he wasn't reading too much into that conversation. The innuendo was barely masked. And her flushed face and rushed heartbeat meant that she must be feeling something as well. He lowered his head and kissed her lightly on her forehead.

She looked up at him, her eyes glittering as they reflected the moons above. A small smile flitted across her mouth, almost faster than he could catch, but it stayed warmly in her eyes as she looked up at him. She lifted her head from his shoulder, then tentatively kissed him.

He smiled against her lips, pleased that she was as nervous as he was, then began kissing her back. His right hand crept down and grabbed hers, entwining their fingers. She squeezed his hand as the kiss deepened, then suddenly let go. Surprised, he drew back from the kiss a little, and she used the opportunity to move from sitting beside him to sitting astride his lap.

She looked into his slightly startled eyes, making sure that this was alright. His pleased grin told her everything she needed to know, and she leaned against him and began to kiss him again. Her hands slid over his shoulders, fingers finding the breadth of him and returning to the nape of his neck. His hands encircled her waist, drawing her a little closer before moving up her back.

She began to unbutton his shirt, one slow button at a time. When she was half done, she placed her hand over his heart and felt the fast beat beneath her fingers. She broke off the kiss on his mouth, then began to slowly move down his body: his chin, his jaw, his neck, his collarbone, then finally, moving her hand, over his heart. After the last kiss she scooted off his lap a bit and placed her head over his heart, listening to the beat.

Knives smiled tightly as she moved on his lap, then dared the edges of her shirt. His hands crept up her sides, slowly moving upwards. She shuddered, his hands ticklish. They reached her bra and stopped.

So did she. Shaking her head, she sat back, pushing his hands down. Her eyes were troubled as they met his, and he wondered what was wrong.

"Knives, what do you think of this?"

"Huh?" What did he think? Wasn't it obvious?

"I mean, you and your views on humans are well known. Are you going to wake up tomorrow and hate yourself? Hate me for touching you? What comes next, Knives?"

He wondered why she needed to know this now. Couldn't they get to next before worrying about it?

"What?"

"Are you ready to accept the consequences of having sex?"

"Babies? I don't think we need to worry about that."

"I don't mean babies. I mean, what are you going to do tomorrow, if we continue?"

"Do?" He was still a little unclear about the problem. "I know what I want to do."

"Tomorrow, Knives. Is this a one night sort of thing?"

"Does it have to be?" he asked plaintively.

"Do you want to be banging a vermin?" she asked baldly, realizing that talking around the problem wasn't working.

"Oh."

"Yes. Oh. I want you to know what you're doing before you start this. Either you want," she didn't say love, although she desperately wanted to, "me enough to be good with this now, and tomorrow, and all the tomorrows that come after, or we're stopping now."

"Stopping?" he repeated.

"I'm not going to go any farther without some idea of what's coming next."

He blinked, finally understanding what she was saying. Irritated, he pushed at her, and she sadly moved off his lap. "Tomorrow." He paused. "I suppose you have my thanks, vermin. I wouldn't want to do something so disgusting as what we almost did. You're right. It's bestiality. Disgusting." He stood up, then strode out towards the desert, entirely frustrated. Why did she have to bring this up now? 

Couldn't she have waited just a little longer?

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	51. Stasis

Go read YOU WANT TO SAVE THEM ALL. Very good fic. Poor author needs reviews. 

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The next morning things were a bit strained between Kiley and Knives, as both tried to ignore what had almost happened. Ace sat back and did her best not to laugh at the two of them. Every chance they got, they were sneaking looks at each other. When one noticed the other looking, they would act completely nonchalant, then within a minute would be sneaking a look in return. It was hilarious. To Ace. The two of them would have given a different response, had they been asked.

The walk hadn't helped Knives much. He had returned to see Kiley already asleep, or at least doing a very good job of pretending. He still didn't know what he wanted. Well, no, he knew what he wanted, but somehow all the things he wanted didn't fit together anymore. He grimaced down at her still form then sought his own bed. That Dream Dancer of hers had surely screwed up his life. He hadn't asked to have her unceremoniously dropped in his lap. He hadn't asked to deal with this. He didn't want to. Unfortunately, that didn't change things.

His thoughts troubled him and he couldn't find sleep. She was right to have stopped him. She was a vermin. The thought of what they were doing together should have sickened him, and it did on a very remote level. Bestiality. He could see keeping this human around as a pet, easily, for the rest of her life. That thought alone was a huge surprise. He had never thought he would find a vermin worthy of being his pet. But no matter how much he liked her, one did not indulge with a pet. The very thought was disgusting. Remotely. But not when he thought of her.

He found himself thinking of his brother and his pet. He knew that Vash didn't think of Meryl as something inferior, even though she was. He had no problem making like bunnies with the woman. His skin crawled at the thought like it had so many times before, but now he found himself wondering. Was it so bad? It wasn't like they weren't similar, closely shaped and formed. Was it so disgusting?

He shook his head. Of course it was. Thoughts like these were dangerous. If he admitted that they were good enough to play with, it was a short step towards liking them. That would make exterminating them all that much harder. His brother thought he killed humans because he hated them. He killed them because they needed to die; hating them just made things easier for him. No, it would be best to ignore her. With that thought, he finally fell asleep, but he found when waking that it was easier to resolve then it was to carry out.

Kiley, on the other hand, just wondered what was going through Knives' head. The decision needed to be made by him; she could not help him along his way or lead him to a conclusion. Her stomach twisted as she worried over what he was thinking; his shuttered visage gave her no clues one way or the other. Would he be able to accept her? And what would she do if he didn't? Could she still stick around, could she handle that? She didn't know. She was very afraid that she had fallen in love with him. It wouldn't surprise her; her heart had the most execrable taste in men. But love was love, and what could you do? Ignore it? She didn't know if she could be that strong.

She found herself entertaining fantasies of what would happen if he did decide she was worthy of his notice. Her heart soared as she pondered the possibilities, then fell as she snuck looks at his blank face. What was he thinking? And if he came to the wrong decision, could she change his mind?

Ace watched both of them and wondered what the big deal was. She was nice enough, and Knives obviously liked her. Why worry about things that hadn't happened yet? She was young and had still managed to figure out that life was full of surprises. You never knew what tomorrow would throw at you, so it was best to enjoy right now and let the later things take care of themselves. But, they were adults. Maybe adults liked to complicate things. So she sat and observed both of them, and only giggled a few times. She had to turn her head often though, as grins sneaked out without her permission.

With all that was on her mind, Kiley may perhaps be forgiven her lapse in attention. Normally she was very astute. Perhaps she was distracted. Perhaps the relative peace had softened her. Her worries had overlain the nagging feeling in the back of her mind, but as the day drew to a close it finally penetrated her consciousness.

Someone was looking for them. Someone was close. Panicked, she searched for them, finding them coming from the direction of December. Whoever it was, they were no more than fifteen minutes away. There was no time to run, and nowhere to go. She looked at their scattered supplies and knew that there was no avoiding whatever was approaching. She didn't know who or what was nearing, and she wondered if it might be more of those men who had waylaid them as they left December. Her gaze went to Ace. The girl was playing with a deck of cards, teaching herself tricks, fanning and shuffling the deck. 

They were not going to get her again. She had promised.

Shaking herself out of her light trance, she strode over to Ace and picked her up. Knives ignored her actions, but he tensed when she spoke.

"Knives, someone's coming,"

He turned and looked at her coldly, then his gaze unfocused. She blinked, surprised, having forgotten that he could affect the minds of others. He stayed that way for a second or two, then returned to piercing her with his eyes.

"It's Vash."


	52. Killing time

Ok, Wouldn'tchaliketakno!! Yes. I would like to know. And I'm not posting the next chapter until you tell me. Because I am Author Lady, who is pissy and evil like that. So spill. 

  


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Kiley relaxed. "Oh. Good."

He glared at her. "No, it's not good. Vash and I did not part on good terms. Technically," he paused for a moment while she looked at him, a bit shocked. "I'm not supposed to have left my ship," he finished up.

She looked at him for a moment, wondering why he hadn't felt the need to share this bit of information. "How much are you not supposed to have left?" she asked dryly.

"Things may get dicey."

She nodded, then turned to Ace. "You. Up there," she ordered, pointing to a spire on the side of the oasis farthest from December. Ace shook her head mulishly. Kiley's gaze grew cold. "No argument." She walked a few steps towards the girl, who began to back up.

"Don't wanna."

"Does it look like your wants are the most important things we're dealing with here?"

"Wanna see Vash."

"I'm sure you will. From up there to begin with, and after he and Knives sort things out, you can come back down and meet him. These two tend to settle problems with bullets, and I'm not letting you get hit by a stray shot or ricochet."

Ace still looked ready to argue, but was stopped cold when Knives told her to go. Sighing, and looking very put out, she began to climb. Slowly. After seeing her begin, Kiley walked over to her pack and pulled out some extra ammunition. 

"Are these safe?" she asked, shooting Knives a loaded look.

He nodded absently, still looking out towards where his brother was.

"You're sure? I wouldn't want any more accidents," she prodded.

"I said they're fine, woman!" he snarled, turning at her and glaring. She merely looked at him calmly, one hand resting on an unopened box.

"Sorry," he mumbled, before turning back to stare into the desert.

Kiley knew her face must reflect her shock. An apology? He must be more nervous then he was letting on. She stifled a grin as she loaded her pockets with bullets.

Suddenly, he shook his head and went to grab his gun. She watched him as his actions mirrored hers, then saw him pause and rest his forehead on the barrel of his gun. His eyes closed and his shoulders tensed as he took a few deep breaths. 

When his eyes opened again they held a glint of humor. "So, what shall we do to pass the time until my brother arrives?"

"Well, we don't have any wine."

"Pity."

"One should always enjoy the finer things life has to offer before a duel?"

"Especially when you aren't sure that you'll see the after," he affirmed, nodding.

"So… wanna play a hand of cards?"

"Against you? You cheat."

She smiled. "You can deal." 

"You'll still cheat," he said, but walked over to Ace's discarded deck. The sound of a raspberry echoed down from the top of a spire. Kiley grinned and met him there. He shuffled the deck, looking her in the eye.

"No tricks, now," he cautioned as he began to deal.

"Me?" she responded, all wounded innocence and affronted dignity.

"You act innocent, but play like a devil."

"I play to win. Whatever it takes," she responded as she arranged her cards in her hand.

She pulled a face at her hand. Nothing. Not even a face card. Not even a hope of a flush or a straight. Nothing.

She pulled three cards at random and tossed them down. Knives fanned the first three off the deck and passed them over. Kiley held her face still. Two pair, nines high. Worth something. Then a thought occurred.

"What exactly are we betting?"

"How about a story? I win, you spill, you win, I'll say something."

"Deal." She grinned, then showed her cards. He looked at them, then slowly turned his hand around. Flush. Damn.

Kiley grimaced, but conceded the loss.

"So," she sighed. "What do you want to know?"

Knives leaned back and thought for a moment. "Why do you go by Kiley?"

She blinked, then snorted. "That's it?" Her tone implied that she felt she was getting off easily. She closed her eyes a second, then bit her lip. "Well, in part it's due to superstition. Back where I come from, you get named, then get a nickname, so no one can steal your soul. So I've always had a nickname. Kiley, though, that's a fun one. When I first joined the Parameds, there was a guy, Jiorje. He didn't speak English as his first language, and his grasp on certain words was further twisted by a really thick accent. The story goes, he saw me walking around in my first couple weeks, and after I had left the room one time he said, 'Thet leddie, she a kiley.' What he was trying to say was that I was a killer. What came out was my new nickname."

"So basically, you have people call you killer?"

She shrugged. "It's a good way to keep me from forgetting."

"That's… somewhat sick."

"You think you have the corner on the market?"

He shrugged, then his eyes drifted out across the desert again.

"Worried?" she asked softly.

"Concerned. I don't know that he's in a very good mood at the moment."

"I'm sure things will work out."

"That's being a bit optimistic."

Kiley bit her tongue. If she had to, she'd make sure things worked out. She just hoped that she wouldn't have to put her newly discovered plan into action. She stood and stretched, then walked over to the spire Ace was imprisoned on. She leaned against it, crossed her arms, and closed her eyes for a moment, seeking peace among the tension. When she found it, she opened her eyes again, ready for what was to come. 

Knives was standing near the center of the oasis, one hand at his side and the other resting on the butt of his gun. She could see by the tensing of his shoulders that she had missed Vash's emergence. Lazily, she turned her gaze to the desert beyond.

He was coming now.


	53. The moment you've all been waiting for!

Have I made you wait long enough?

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She was oddly disappointed by her first sight of him. She had wanted to see the famed red jacket so much that it's absence had her looking for someone else. Surely the man in the black vest wasn't Vash. Vash wore red.

Then he was a little nearer, and she saw that it was his body armor. Ah. Ok. That's right. He tossed the coat. She mourned the coat for a moment, then started. Vash had body armor. Knives had… she checked quickly. A shirt. And pants. And it was his silk shirt! She worried and fumed at the same time. Knives didn't have any armor on. He might get hurt. But if anything happened to that shirt…

Deciding that the moment didn't call for her yelling across the oasis, she instead sent a thought his way. *You better not let anything happen to that shirt.*

He jumped a little, then turned and shot her a startled glance that quickly turned to one of irritation. "Hush. No distractions," he ordered.

She held her hands out placatingly, but he had already turned back to his brother. She crossed them again with a little smile. He had better not let anything happen to that shirt, or he would pay.

She shifted her gaze back to Vash. Sunlight glinted off his glasses, and she peered closely, trying to tell if they were… yes! They were the really cool yellow glasses. She wondered for a moment if she could steal them, then decided that she probably would look incredibly silly in them. Or she would feel incredibly silly in them. They were Vash glasses, Vash's glasses. Not hers.

She felt like grinning. Vash was coming. She knew that this wasn't the best of all possible situations, but she was actually getting to meet one of the coolest people ever. As he came closer she could see a few more details. Like the scars on his neck and arm. As they came into focus, she cringed. Those looked painful. And there sure were a lot of them. More than she had expected. Looked like almost as many as she had possessed at one time, and she knew just how painful their collection could be. And with the pathetic excuse for medical science this planet sported, it was a wonder he was still alive.

But he was. And at the moment, he looked very pissed. He walked into the oasis, not breaking his stride until he was only a few paces from his unmoving brother. They stood in a tense silence for a moment, and Kiley used the time to compare the two. Height, shoulders, face… they were definitely brothers. But Knives was cuter.

She grinned as she stifled that line of thought. It was not the time to compare the brothers. It was time to watch them and try to keep them both alive. She sobered at the thought, and resumed her watchful mien. Vash dropped a carry sack to his feet, then kicked it off to the side.

"Didn't expect to see you here," he started, calmly enough.

Knives didn't respond quickly, but looked around at the rocks and sky. "Thought it was time for a change of scenery."

"I don't think that's the only reason you're out here."

"I always knew you weren't a dumb as you seemed."

"Why, Knives?"

"Why not? I haven't done anything."

"I see you've started another collection of killers. I heard what happened outside of December," he said, not really changing the subject at all.

"That wasn't entirely intentional. You know how vermin can be." 

Kiley bristled at that but kept silent.

"A man is dead!"

"That man would have killed us and taken Ace back to wherever it was she escaped from. He wasn't one of the decent, peace-loving humans you adore."

"He might have changed. She took away his chance."

"He might have killed us. What about our chances?"

Vash shook his head. "This isn't why I'm here."

"Why are you here then? A touching family reunion? You want to see your new niece?"

"I don't think you're the person who should be raising a child."

"Afraid I'll taint her with the truth? She knows that we're superior already, Vash. I didn't need to teach her that."

"We're no better than they are."

"You persist in sticking to that obviously fallacious theory. Someday you will admit that I am right."

"There will be no such day."

"You never thought you would kill, either. Do you still see the blood on your hands?"

Vash eyed him coldly. "Every damn day. And I know who to thank for that."

Knives bobbed in a little half-bow. "Happy to oblige. Wear anymore red?"

Vash said nothing, but shifted his weight forward a bit. "I think we need to take a little trip."

"Oh? Where? Your favorite graveyard, where all your little pets lie, dead and rotted?"

Vash's face tightened. "You are going back to your ship."

"And if I'd rather not?"

"Do you think you get a choice?" His hand began to hover over the gun at his hip. "I've taken you down before."

Knives feigned fear. "Oh, no. My baby brother has come to pick up after me again. Whatever shall I do? Oh, I know. I'll show you some of what I've learned!" A wind whipped at Vash, sand stinging his exposed flesh. "I'm not being taken back like a bad boy being grounded, Vash. Not this time."

Vash's hand clamped firmly on his gun. "Stop this, Knives. We don't need to fight."

"I think we might," he said, but the wind dropped.

Kiley dropped her hand to her gun, loosening it in the holster. Things looked like they might get out of control soon, and although she hoped they could sort things out, that looked more and more like optimism. She hadn't wanted to do this… Her hand clamped on the butt of her pistol, and she made to draw. Then stopped.

The firm and insistent presence of another gun pressed firmly in the small of her back drew her mind away from the drama unfolding before her. 

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A/N explaining the previous A/N: Ok. I was taunted in a review. Someone signed in as "wouldn'tcahliketakno?" The response? YES. This was mean on two levels. One, it was a challenge. I almost always respond to challenges. Two, it invoked my curiosity. My curiosity is like a force of nature. Raise it at your peril.


	54. Meeting Meryl

*sighs* You guys would kill me if I took a day off now, huh?

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"Hands over your head."

The voice was filled with menace, which was quite a trick since it was pitched so low. Kiley slowly lifted her hands away from her sides and had them hover in the general region of her head.

"Let's not do anything rash here," she said calmly and softly, trying equally hard to not interrupt the drama before them. "I'm just a spectator."

"We'll keep it that way." She felt the gun leave her holster and heard it tossed somewhere off to her right. Her hands dipped a bit, but the increased pressure at her back coaxed them back up again. She bit her lip, wondering what she was supposed to do now. Well, when in doubt, see if you can weasel out.

"Meryl, I assume?"

"I don't think my name is any of your business."

"Friendly."

"I don't think I need to be friendly to one of Knives' freaks."

Kiley felt her blood begin to boil, but she fought down the reaction. Freak? FREAK? She was no one's _freak_. She clenched her teeth against the rage that rushed through her, and tried to remind herself that people on this planet had no idea how much of an epithet that word really was. She was pleased that she managed to avoid turning and throttling the person behind her, but she wasn't able to keep her mouth shut.

"At least I'm trying to be friendly, bitch."

She ignored the startled intake of breath behind her but could hardly ignore the greater pressure in the small of her back. 

"Either shoot me or don't, but stop trying to drill a hole in my back," she demanded. The pressure increased for another moment, then drew back. "Thanks. So glad you could join me today," she started sarcastically.

"I'd rather not be here," ground out the voice behind her. "But it's best for all concerned if we stop Knives' scheme before he gets started."

"Scheme? I don't think he has a scheme."

"Maybe not one he's told you, but you're just a flunky."

Kiley sighed tightly, the hiss of breath escaping through her clenched teeth. "I'm not his flunky."

Meryl snorted. "Sure you aren't. Knives doesn't have friends."

"I didn't say I was his friend. I just said I'm not his flunky. He wishes I were his flunky, but he wants a lot of things he's not getting."

"So what are you then?"

Kiley gestured towards Knives, who was showing off his skills, dancing colored balls of light around Vash's head to distract him. "Unfortunately, I'm the one who got to teach him that."

The person standing behind Kiley peeked around her, and she noted that it truly was Meryl. "You are a freak," she said incredulously, taking back her place behind Kiley. "None of that freaky stuff, or I'll shoot."

Kiley gritted her teeth. "I. Am. Not. A. Freak. Do you want me to just start calling you bitch?"

"I don't care what you call me. Vash is going to stop Knives, and then you can just go back to whatever hole it is you crawled out of."

"That's not quite an option," Kiley mumbled. 

"What was that?"

"I can't quite go back to where I came from. Long, boring, complicated story. Have fun not hearing it," she replied airily. 

"You have an interesting sense of propriety. Do you think now is the time to be making jokes?"

"Every time is a good time to make jokes," she replied, eyeing the boys as they tussled. "But now is a better time then usual. Look at the butt on Vash. That boy still works out." The barrel was jammed against her again. "Ooh, sorry. Didn't know I couldn't even look."

"He's mine."

"Like a dog. Here, Spot. I thought you didn't like that sort of treatment. Or was it just that you didn't like seeing someone else get to treat him like that when you couldn't? Ouch, woman! That isn't a stiletto. Back it off." She minced her back away from the gun. 

"You have a mouth on you."

"And eyes, too. Both seem to be getting me in trouble now."

"Shut up!" Meryl advanced until she could grind the gun against her spine again. "You don't seem to think I'll shoot."

"You're one of the good guys, right? I'm not too worried."

"Vash only dislikes killing. I think I can cripple you for life and still be forgiven."

"And you're willing to find out?"

"It sounds like a good plan to me."

"Huh. Something sure made you touchy. Wonder what plant boy over there isn't telling me again," she mused.

"Plant boy?" came the faint echo from behind her. "Did I… hear that right?"

Kiley risked a look over her shoulder. "I told you, I'm not his flunky."

Meryl's eyes met hers, flashing with anger. "I don't care what you are. Hanging around with him makes you evil by default."

"Nice logic, Meryl. You're aging well, by the way."

Her mouth dropped open. It moved a couple times, searching for words but not finding any. Meryl's face turned an interesting shade of purple, and the derringer was taken from her back and in the process of being aimed towards her face when time slowed.

A glimpse of light at the top of her vision captured her attention. Instincts that she had feared might have slowed proved themselves again as she threw herself on Meryl, knocking her to the ground, protecting her with her body. As she grabbed the woman and they traveled towards the ground, she formed a shield of light and force, haphazardly grabbing at what sources of energy she could and desperately channeling them all into something she hoped would hold against the blast that was coming her way.

The beam hit the shield and bounced against it, reflecting off into the desert where it impacted harmlessly against the sands. The flash of impact against the shield was bright enough to temporarily blind, had you been caught looking at it. Knowing better, she had kept her eyes shut, but she still blinked away spots. Kiley winced, feeling the pain of use in areas of her mind that had lain dormant for years. 

"Ouch." She rolled off of Meryl and looked towards where the boys had been battling. Both had stopped and were looking at her with an identical expression of disbelief on their face. 

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A/N: Please go here. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CymberleahsFics/


	55. Brothers fight

But what if I want lots of sleep? I don't get to get lots of sleep when I write the chappies….

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Knives eyed his brother warily. He let the wind drop, having made his point. "I think we might," he responded. 

"Where did you learn to do that?" asked Vash, slightly wild eyed. 

Knives merely grinned, then used the wind to whip sand into his eyes. While Vash was distracted, he rushed closer. He didn't really want to hurt his brother, so he didn't pull his gun while he had the chance. But his brother did need to learn that things had changed. 

Vash had thrown himself to the left to get out of the way of the stinging sand, and Knives learned some of the drawbacks of using that little tactic. One, it obscured visibility of his target. Two, when he ran where his brother had been, the sand stung him as well. He spun around as he dropped the wind, but some small particulate matter still got in his eyes, making them water as he searched for his brother. 

He found him sitting, shocked on the sand. "Whoa. How do you do that?" he asked, standing up and brushing sand off his rear. 

Knives grinned again, and Vash's gaze turned towards Kiley. "How does she do that?"

"Magic," said Knives, drawing the word out. 

"Really?" he looked a little scared.

"No." Knives' expression darkened as he contemplated his brother's gullibility. "It's not really magic."

"Oh. Darn." He looked disappointed. Knives cocked his had to the right and looked at his brother searchingly. "Well, magic is cool," he protested. 

"There is no such thing as magic."

"It's still cool."

Knives shook his head, then got the wind knocked out of him as Vash tackled his waist. He twisted and had managed to elude his brother's grasp by the time he reached the ground, but his knees and left wrist stung as they caught his weight. He rolled to his right, catching Vash's grin as he got back to his feet.

Knives merely grunted in response, then sent some of those stupid balls of light toward his brother's eyes, dazzling him. He chased him around with them a bit until Vash decided to close his eyes and rush him. With a grin, he shifted slightly to the side and tripped his brother as he rushed by. Vash plowed into the ground chin first, creating a furrow in the sand. 

"Hey, no fair," he whined as he rolled over. "I can't do that."

"I can. That makes it fair," replied Knives. He had walked over to his prone brother and now stood over him, one arm extended. His hand was held out, palm parallel to his brother's head, and he exuded threat. Vash cringed and started to try to crawl backwards, and Knives laughed. "What?" he asked. "I was going to help you to your feet."

Vash looked at him nonplussed. "Sure you were. You were going to do some more of that freaky magic stuff."

"Maybe," responded his brother with a smile.

Vash stared. "You… aren't taking this seriously."

Knives stopped smiling, then thought it over. "No. I don't think I am."

"Why not?"

"Because… I'm mostly innocent this time." He took in his brother's startled expression. "I said mostly."

"But… how could you be innocent? You're never innocent!"

"I haven't done hardly anything since I left the ship except follow that woman around and beg her to teach me these tricks," he muttered, his voice pitched so only Vash could hear. 

"But, someone died," Vash responded in the same tone.

"One, she did it. Two… it was rather an accident."

"How do you accidentally kill someone?" his brother asked. Knives was about to dance around that subject when he felt a strange draining sensation. From the look on his brother's face, he felt it as well. Spinning on his heel, he turned just in time to see the beam of light travel from midway down the spire and impact on the shield Kiley had hastily erected. He didn't see the light get harmlessly reflected into the desert as the flash from the impact had clouded his vision for a moment. He blinked back tears, then was roughly pushed aside as Vash sprinted past him. He fell to one knee, then pushed himself up, eyes still watering, and followed after his brother. 

He watched Vash drop to his knees beside Meryl, watched him carefully check her over for any harm that might have occurred to her. She seemed shaken but all right. As he approached the scene, he caught her glaring at Kiley, asking what all that had been about.

"She saved your life, pet," he said coldly, looking down at Kiley. She looked up at him, obviously tired. Her face was an unhealthy shade of gray, but at the moment he could have cared less. "What did you do?"

"Sorry," she said quietly. "I didn't really think about where the energy was coming from. I just pulled. I didn't have much time to realize what I was doing." She shifted slightly, a hiss of breath escaping her lips. 

"That was disgusting. How dare you?" He kneeled down beside her and slapped her, knocking her head back against the rock. "How dare you do that to me?"

She didn't respond quickly. Instead she blinked hard a couple times, trying to think past the shooting pain in her head. "I said I was sorry. I didn't do it on purpose. I needed power and it was there. I didn't have time to think about where it was coming from."

"You should have."

"Then I'd probably be dead, Knives. Ace wasn't shooting blanks at Meryl. That would have killed her." Meryl's breath hissed through her teeth as Kiley said this, but both she and Vash stayed quiet. Kiley sighed. "Go check on Ace, alright?"

"Why don't you?" he asked with a sneer.

"Because I've been fucking shot, that's why." 

He grabbed the hand she had clutched to her stomach. It was covered with blood, and more seeped through her shirt as he watched. He dropped her hand and looked in her eyes. 

"Go get Ace. She's too young to do this sort of thing."

"Fine," he snarled, standing. "I'll climb the dammed rock."

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A/N: Yes. I used the R-Rated word. I'm not changing the story's rating for it. So there.


	56. Healer, heal thyself

I get one day off every two weeks. Or I steal one… *grins* And it's been awhile…

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Kiley waited until after she heard Knives start climbing the spire to move her hand from the wound. She grimaced at the blood on her hand, and at the slow ooze that stained the front of her shirt, but what she worried over was the blood she could feel dripping down her back. Already the rear of her jeans was soaked with it, sticking to her back and pulling on her flesh with every shallow breath. Her mouth was dry with a mixture of fear and blood loss, and she lifted her shirt to look at the entrance wound.

Her mouth twisted at what she saw. The bullet had just missed glancing off a rib, passing just under her ribcage and out her back. The hole looked a little messy on the front, and her fingers lightly probed the exit wound. Her breath hissed through her teeth as she touched the edges of the raw area; a chunk of flesh larger than a quarter was completely missing from her back. 

Her eyes unfocused as she made a quick evaluation of what was hit inside. The bullet had managed to nick her small intestine, and it also tore part of her diaphragm and ripped the hell out of her abs and back muscles, but the majority of her organs seemed to be all right.

She blinked, recalling herself to the present. Her eyes struggled to focus as she looked around the oasis. Vash was carefully taking stock of any and all injuries a very shaken Meryl might have received. Her face was pale, and the offending gun had been placed as far off to her side as she could get it without throwing it somewhere. Kiley would have grinned at the tableau, had she the energy. She wouldn't have minded having someone hover over her like that, but she got to have the brother who decided that a concussion was the proper sort of greeting.

Vash caught her watching them. His expression was very serious as he looked at her, and she closed her eyes, not ready to deal with him at the moment. She dropped into the deepest level of trance she could, needing to free her mind from distractions so she could heal the damage before it killed her.

She coaxed stem cells out of the various places they hid over her body, cultivating them as they traveled through her bloodstream and changing them into whatever tissue she needed to suit her purpose as they arrived at the scene of damage. Her next task was to repair the main severed parts of her circulation system before she bled to death on the sand. 

As she tried to coax some semblance of heath back into her body, she couldn't help but overhear the reactions of Vash and Meryl to Ace's arrival. The gasps of shock let her know that the girl didn't look very good, but Kiley refused to worry. She was strong; she should pull through. 

Voices drifted through her mind, phrases imprinting themselves on her memory without her being able to react.

"Will she be ok? What were you teaching her?"

Kid picks up things she's not supposed to.

"Ace. Come on girl. What were you thinking? She isn't worth this."

Not… worth? Her heart dropped at that, but she kept working on healing herself.

"That freak deserved being shot."

Oh. Thanks for the concern Meryl.

She tried to push the voices away, tried to ignore them. They were ruining her concentration. It was times like these that she really wished she could drop into a full trance, to be able to shut out the rest of the world and concentrate totally on one thing. It never happened, but she could always wish for such nice things. Tiredly, she cursed her stepfather one more time.

She went back to repairing the hole in her intestine, carefully lifting any matter and bacteria that might have spilled out to the surface of her skin so she could brush it away when she was done. Next came the careful restructuring of the damaged soft tissues. It wouldn't do to leave a hole and have her insides shift later when she bent over or something. 

Next she began to pull any and all unattached and barely attached protein fibers and pulled them to her diaphragm. She worked them into the hole, carefully layering them and fixing the tear. Her breathing eased as she could take deeper breaths and actually pull air into her left lung again. She used the remaining fibers to begin to repair the hole in her back muscles, then culled some more from other parts of her body until the muscles were repaired. She found some more stem cells and grafted them on to the skin that was present. With a small exhausted smile she sagged, then allowed herself to follow up on something that had been bothering her.

Her cells weren't reacting in their normal manner. Everything felt very close to the way she remembered being, but something was different, and she just couldn't put her finger on what it was. She looked at them more closely, picking a stem cell just because they held the ability to become anything she needed. Peering at it, dissecting it with her mind, she found some irregularities that showed up throughout the rest of her cells.

She wondered just what the heck was going on here. Just when she thought she was getting a handle of the way things worked on this planet she gets to find something new and scary. She made a quick scan of Meryl's cell structure, looking for these irregularities but finding nothing. Then she looked at Ace, and her stomach dropped.

Every single one of the differences she found were present. With a heavy heart, she checked them against Knives and Vash as well.

Present. Every one.

Her heart stopped beating as she pondered the evidence. When Dream Dancer stuck her here, she knew that she had gained a new body. She just hadn't realized it wasn't a human one.

With that thought she found herself pulled into a full trance.

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Hmmm… think I might stop here… *evil laugh*

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CymberleahsFics/


	57. Back to the beginning

Looks like I posted another day. You guys are soooo lucky. Remember that.

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Kiley looked around, wondering just what was happening. She wanted to take a few moments… days… years… to figure out just what the heck had happened to her, but it didn't look like that was going to happen right away. She couldn't see anything, and found herself growing more and more frustrated as time passed. Or as she thought time passed. She didn't know where she was, or what was going on, and nothing irritated her more than not knowing the situation. 

Gradually she grew aware of a lightening of the darkness over towards her left. She waited patiently for what felt like a few minutes, then decided that patience was the most overrated of all the virtues and tried to move off towards it. First at a walk, then at a jog, then at a run, she moved towards it as fast as she could. To no effect.

"Dammit!" she screamed, nerves frayed beyond her ability to bear. She threw her head back and screamed out her frustration, a long unending shriek that was ripped from her very essence. After it began, it seemed to take on a life of its own, clawing its way out of her throat before growing to fill what had once been silence. It echoed strangely against the blackness, seeming at times to come from someplace other than her own throat, as if there were other souls trapped in the blackness with her.

It began to scare her as it went on past the time that her lungs could have possibly supported. She tried to clamp down on it, to stop it, to gain control but it eluded her. Grimly she attacked her scream, stopping her breath and clenching her jaw shut. Even then it tried to escape, coming out muffled a few moments longer before finally conceding defeat. Echoes continued to ring in her ears, her scream sounding like a chorus, then a lone voice, and then finally trickling off into silence.

It was a heavy silence, fraught with foreboding. She was tempted to make a comment of some sort, but refrained, unwilling to hear what it might be distorted into. She resumed walking towards the faint source of illumination, but it was more out of a need to be doing something than she thought she might get anywhere. It was as if that scream had stripped her of her willpower, and all that was left was a need to be doing something, anything.

So she was shocked when she realized that the light was getting brighter. Shocked, but still not motivated to move faster. She plodded along, moving closer to the light, or the light moved closer to her. She couldn't tell anymore.

Then she saw who was in the light, and rage washed over her, filling her with something that passed for energy and masqueraded as spunk. She stopped moving, crossed her arms, and glared. As the being moved closer, she waited, ire growing as she thought on all the indignities she had suffered at her hands.

"I might have known this was your doing," she said flatly, passing by anything even remotely resembling a pleasantry.

"What's wrong, dear?" was the solicitous reply.

"What the hell were you thinking? I only wanted two things. Love. Peace. I'm in the middle of a rotting desert, shot, and living at the whim of a merciless killer. Plus," she emphasized the word, "what the hell did you do to me? What am I now?"

"Oh dear." The melodious voice seemed a bit sad. "You have screwed things up, haven't you?"

"ME?" Kiley carefully didn't scream, remembering the disaster earlier but she wanted to. "How do you figure that?"

"I can't have set things up for you much more nicely. I picked a nice man for you, lonely and not too likely to be picky as long as you were the right species."

"But I LIKED my species. Why did you have to go and change me like that? Without any warning, even?"

A puzzled look crossed her face. "What would be the fun in that?"

"A hell of a lot more fun than I'm having right now," she ground out through clenched teeth. 

"Oh. No, I meant fun for me. I get so much enjoyment out of watching you fumble through things. Like this whole Ace thing. You had better wrap Knives around your finger soon, or she'll grow up and he'll want her instead."

"She can have him," she mumbled, but her heart wasn't in it. "Why a plant?" she asked more loudly, hating the plaintive edge that crept into her voice.

"Did you really think he could love you if you were human? One of the reasons I picked him was because he's in a position to take whatever comes his way. He can't quite afford to be picky, either."

"Picky? What does that have to do with love?" she asked, forcing down a wail. "I wanted love. In all the universe, the best you could do for me was find a guy who couldn't be picky?"

"You were a difficult case to place," Dream Dancer mused. "Not many men would want a girl like you."

Kiley's heart dropped, and she grappled with it to keep it from breaking entirely. "Oh."

"I mean, who would want a screwed-up, psychotic, ex-assassin who can't decide exactly what she is anymore? Who would want to be saddled with someone with as much emotional baggage as you, if they had any choice at all?"

Kiley felt her face begin to crumple. "But… he seemed…"

"Attracted?" she finished up as Kiley fumbled to a stop. "Pheromones. Vash will think you're attractive, too, but he's so besotted with Meryl that you would have no chance with him, even if he did decide to overlook your past."

Kiley found herself sprawled on the floor and wondered when she had fallen. "So it's all just… biology."

"Of course it is. What, did you actually think for a moment that it could be love?"

Kiley grasped for something, anything. "But what about peace?"

"This is so much more fun for me to watch," she was told coldly, and then the darkness took her again, whisking her away from that horrid place and the implacable vision that had stolen and warped all of her dreams.

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Didn't see that coming, either, huh? 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CymberleahsFics/


	58. Sisters talk

*grins* Just when you thought I was going to keep writing the same old boring stuff…

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The being stood in the darkness, surrounded by it, caressed by it. She had dropped the illumination as the woman had left, feeling more at home in the murky environs than she ever did in the light. Rippling, she dropped her sister's seeming and stood with her own face, the Queen of Nightmares. 

These mortals were so much fun to play with. Her sister enjoyed making their hopes and wishes come true. She just failed to recognize the true amusement potential of raising their hopes, then dashing them. It was entirely entertaining to watch their faces crumble as the extent of their folly was pointed out to them. This last one, with that artless little collapse to the floor had been especially nice. 

It was always the tough ones who were the most fun to watch as they saw their hopes destroyed. The ones who felt they could handle anything; the ones who barely allowed themselves hope in the first place, it was absolutely divine to watch them fall. And this one… oh, it was nice. She hadn't allowed herself to hope for so long, and after her sister had helped out she still didn't surrender to hope easily. It was only lately that she had begun to think that her life might have actually changed. Pointing out that nothing ever changed was delicious. They always believed that particular lie.

Queen grinned. The confusion she sensed when the woman had found what her sister had done to her was too good an opportunity to pass up. She was already off balance; destroying her hope had been easy. Almost too easy. A small frown teased her lips. She wished that she could have tortured her a little longer, but the woman had somehow torn herself from her grasp. Her hand clenched and unclenched at her side. Toys weren't supposed to leave before she was done playing. It worried her slightly. The thing might not have been broken all the way… then she relaxed, smiling again. Her mind replayed the fall, the pained expression on her face, and the delicious feeling of the breaking heart. She would be just fine.

She replayed the sound of Kiley's scream, letting it join the chorus of others she collected. A symphony of pain and horror, terror and heartbreak, it was one of the ways she passed her time. Some might call her composition a cacophony, but they were just jealous that they didn't have such beautiful sounds to enjoy. She played with it, wondering where the sound of frustration would fit in the best. 

She noticed a gradual lightening of her realm. Turning to her right, she watched her sister appear in a pool of light. She let her screams die down, disappear into the fabric of her realm.

"I wish you wouldn't bother my people," she said without preamble.

"Hello, sister dear. Slumming, again?"

"You know why I'm here. You said that you would leave my people alone, yet you persist in undoing my efforts."

"If you worked a little harder at things it might mot be so easy for me," she replied, playing with her nails.

"If I just give them their hearts desire they value it less. You have seen that."

"Yes, dear. But in making them work for their dreams you leave such glorious opportunities for me to have a little fun."

"At the expense of mine. You know I like to watch them be happy."

"You're a hopeless romantic, is what you are. If things are fated then your little pets will get together."

Dream Dancer sighed in frustration. "You know as well as I do that there is not such a thing as destiny."

Her sister peered up at her through her lashes, eyes glinting with humor. "But you try so hard to make it look like there is."

She huffed. "I just try to be thorough."

"Then next time be thorough enough to leave me fewer openings. This one was too easy. She was no fun."

"There won't be a next time. You promised to leave my people alone."

"Oh. That's right. Well, I promise, again."

Her sister sighed. "Why do you persist in undoing my efforts? Will you ever stop?"

Queen looked her sister in the eye. "It is more fun to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory than it is to take an already broken being and bring them lower. And I'll stop when you make me." She read her sister's expression and grinned. "And you're never going to make me. These mortals aren't important enough to get in a fight over. Go back to your little palace of light, or wherever you please. You destroy my darkness."

"I'll go, but I think you need to change your ways."

"Think all you want. Whenever you feel like doing something other than thinking I'll begin to worry."

Dream Dancer glared at her sister. Then she smiled. "I think you failed with this one."

"What? You didn't see her as she left. She was crushed. Destroyed."

She nodded. "You did a good job. On her. But you didn't count on the man."

"Him? He won't help her. He's heartless."

Her sister smiled, that secretive smile that the Queen of Nightmares hated so much. "What do you know? What aren't you telling me?"

Dream Dancer shook her head. "They live a long time, those plants. Your victory would have to have been much more complete to be final." She opened her portal again.

"What? What do you mean?"

She shot a grin over her shoulder. "I didn't pick Knives because he's a lonely man, as you suggested. I picked him because he's a stubborn man who won't let her get away."

"But… he doesn't know he wants her!"

"Yet. But that will change." She waved and passed into her realm.

The Queen of Nightmares replayed Kiley's scream, and this time she joined it. The echoes in her realm seemed to be laughing at her now. Damn her sister.

She was right.

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CymberleahsFics/


	59. Depression

Kiley opened her eyes, then blinked, confused. It had seemed to her like hours had passed, but the tableau before her was very similar to the one she had left. Everyone had clustered around Ace, and the girl still wasn't moving. Dimly, she was aware of this being a bad thing, but true discomfort could not break through the haze that surrounded her.

Ah, she thought. I'm in shock.

Feeling absurdly proud that she could make that diagnosis, she closed her eyes, hoping that some black force would take her away from here again. And maybe this time they wouldn't let her come back. She sat that way for a good minute or two, then gave it up as a lost cause.

As she opened her eyes once more, she saw no change in the positions of the people before her. They were all still completely absorbed in whatever had befallen Ace. Her heart panged. She had been shot, hadn't she? She dimly remembered that… the pain, the healing… what they said when they thought she couldn't hear. Why did no one care to see how she was doing? She thought these things, but there was no malice or pain in them. She was merely acknowledging facts. No one cared about her. That was clear.

She wondered what they would say if they knew she was a plant. Would they ignore her then? Probably not. They would probably be torn, torn between worrying about her or about Ace. But since she was human, or thought to be, or at least close enough, she was not worthy of their care.

She thought on that for a while. She would be lying if she said that it didn't bother her. Why should her value lie in something she had no control over? So what if she wasn't human. Why should that make anyone treat her differently? Right then she resolved to not tell anyone what she had just found out. They didn't deserve to know. 

She had spent too many years forcing people to interact with her based on her own merits, and not on what body she had happened to be born into. If they felt that ignoring her was what she deserved, then who was she to argue? Vash and Meryl didn't know her, Knives was too entirely species centered, and Ace… well, she was hurt too. But she was getting to be as bad as Knives. No reason to tell her, either.

She smiled a bit, then, a smile that held nothing of humor, and everything of pain. Pheromones. It explained so much, like how she could have been attracted to him in the first place. If pressed, she was unsure she could come up with anything about him that she liked, anything that she respected, anything that she could point to and say, yes, I like him for this. And likely he could not find any reason to like her, either. Biology. It was nothing she could change, but it wasn't something she had to be a slave to, either. Just looking at him now twisted something deep inside her. It was a feeling not unlike a sinking stomach, but it involved much more pain.

Gradually, she grew aware of a pressing thirst. It didn't surprise her; she had lost a great deal of blood. She could still feel it, sticky and half-dried against her back. She sat up a little straighter, then pushed herself to her feet, slowly pushing her back against the spire until she stood more or less erect. Her head swam as she almost blacked out; she had too little blood left in her for much physical activity. 

Grimly, she set her jaw and shuffled off toward the spring. If willpower alone could make her reach it, then she would be fine. But the weakness of her body worried her. If she fell before reaching the water she wasn't sure that she could make herself get up again.

So, she just wouldn't fall. Her eyes focused on her goal. If anyone looked over and saw her as she made her slow, painstaking way along, she neither saw them, nor did they feel the need to help her along. It was as if whatever drama was playing out with Ace, it was taking place in a dimension slightly removed from the one she inhabited. They could not see her, or they refused to care. 

And so did she. Either Ace would be ok or she would not, but at the moment there was nothing that Kiley could do for her. She was spent, physically, and although she would not admit it, emotionally as well. The water drew her, enticing her. Even when the world grew gray around the edges, still the water beckoned. She let it be the entire focus of her existence, her sole reason for being. She was alive only to travel the last few feet to the water.

Then she was there, and all thought fled as she collapsed, her knees giving out at the water's edge. She dunked her head in the water, immersing it, drawing it in through her pores as much as through her mouth. She took in as much as she could before the need to breathe forced her head out. 

She blinked as the water poured off her face. It felt like tears as it dripped down, but strangely her heart was empty. After regaining her breath, she dropped her face to the water once more. This time she had enough control to immerse only her face.

The water was cool and comforting, a blessing against her too tight skin. She could feel the water tension against her face, and she wished that it would accept her. Even such a thin barrier as this seemed to much to her. Nothing accepted her; she belonged nowhere. 

Despondent, she kept her face immersed. He lungs began to complain, but she ignored them. Nothing really mattered. No one would miss her if she was gone. 

Then a hand roughly grabbed her hair and hauled her out of the pool.


	60. Left alone

She didn't sputter, didn't give away the fact that her lungs had begun to complain about their lack of air. She may have been consigned to living, but she wasn't going to let anyone know how close she had come to giving up. She exhaled, one long, slow sigh of breath, then inhaled fresh air into her lungs, once. Then she looked up at whoever had possessed the audacity to pull her out of the pool. 

She looked up first, then down. Meryl was leaning into the pool, filling a cup with water. 

"What the hell was that?" she asked her, waspishly. 

"You were in the way," came Meryl's response, delivered in much the same tone of voice. 

Kiley blinked, hard, then looked over toward where the plants congregated. Ace was awake and half sitting up, leaning against Knives' chest. She looked very pale, and still quite sick. Knives held her protectively while Vash looked on, worried. As she watched, Ace assayed a smile, and she saw some tension slide out of his shoulders. Kiley blinked again, then looked back at Meryl, watched her take the cup back to Ace.

Knives took it from her hand, then placed it to Ace's lips. Something twisted in Kiley's stomach as she watched. It was something that went beyond jealousy, because it wasn't directed at Ace. It was something that went beyond want, as merely saying she desired it demeaned what she felt. Craved it, maybe, like an addict needed the next dose of their drug. Or like lungs ached for their next breath of air. The need was so strong that it overtook reason, overtook rationality, and moved into a clear, blind rage.

How dare they. She fought down the feeling, hating it, hating that she needed someone, anyone. She denied the desire, pushing it down deep inside her, burying it under layers of pain and distrust. 

Fine, she told herself. They don't care. I don't care either. I don't need them or their caring; I am strong enough to do without them. And even if I were not, I'd rather die than accept their help. She growled, low and under her breath, more a rumbling deep in her chest than a noise.

She shrugged her shoulders, trying to dispel some of the emotion that raged through her. The pull of the shirt against her back, half stuck to the drying blood, motivated her to move. Suddenly she didn't want anyone to see how badly she had been hurt, to see just how nearly fatal Meryl's bullet had been. They might decide to care at that point, and she wasn't sure enough of her decision to hate them, unsure it would last if they decided to acknowledge that she, too, had been hurt. 

She pushed herself to her feet and slowly managed to walk over to her bag. She pulled her shirt off as she walked, testing her balance, glad she didn't fall as she tried to do two things at once. She balled the shirt up, then used the resulting handful to rub at the mess left on her back. She winced a bit as she accidentally brushed too hard against the freshly healed skin. She knew that she was making a mess of her back, more smearing the blood about than actually cleaning it off. As long as she cleaned off enough that the rest would not show through whatever shirt she put on next she was happy.

Leaning down, she pulled out whatever shirt was closest to the top and wriggled into it. The now completely ruined shirt was shoved into the farthest recesses of her bag. She felt a soft pang as she pushed it away. It was the first shirt that she had bought on this planet, and as such had held a soft place in her heart. She shook her head. It was cloth and thread, nothing more. Nothing to get worked up over losing. 

She turned and stood, looked over at the drama that she wished she could ignore. Then she blinked, struck by a thought. Why should she go over there? They obviously didn't need her. She was superfluous, unnecessary. With a sniff she sat down again. Let them come over here if they cared to talk to her. Not that they would. 

She closed her eyes, incredibly weary. Sleep sounded incredibly good, but her thoughts raged too much to let her rest. She had been shot. She had been shot trying to defend another life. Ace had been trying to kill Meryl. So who got all the attention? The kid, of course. It made her toy with the idea of shooting Meryl then passing out, just to see what would happen.

She sighed, then pursued a line of thought she wished she didn't have to. A plant. How could she not have seen it? Were there no clues? She thought back, then winced. Of course there were. Why, when she had first placed that family under a stasis field, that night that Knives had finally caught up to her. She should not have been able to do that. She had been constantly overestimating how tired she was at the ends of these things, but had passed off the shortened recovery times as a result of a fresh young body. Everything here had seemed bright and fresh, full of opportunity. If she was a little better, a little faster, well, it had fit in so well.

What a fool she was. She should have known, should have found out somehow, earlier. Now what was she supposed to do? The entire plants/humans problem took on an entirely new dimension for her. Brothers… sisters… were they hers? Would they disown her as some sort of freak, or would they accept her? She snorted. Probably the later, but what would she do if it were the former?

And now how was she supposed to stop Knives? Just opposing him didn't work; look at Vash. They both battled on, neither one giving in to the other. Knives wasn't going to stop his crusade just because she wanted him to quit. She shook her head, confused, looking at the unsolvable dilemma from another angle and still coming up blank.


	61. A sick child

Super tired whilst typing. No pointing out of typos needed. =Þ

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Meryl saw that her hands were shaking and clenched them into tight fists. She then buried them deep in her lap, hiding the evidence of the stress she was under. She didn't know where to look, what to think about. First there was that woman, that infuriatingly smug woman. Then there was the incredibly cute child who had purportedly tried to kill her. Looking into those big blue eyes, utterly empty of guile or hatred, she wondered if she was being told the truth. Surely a child this young wouldn't be a killer? But then again, given the company she kept…

She shot a look at Knives, peering through her eyelashes in an attempt to keep him from noticing her scrutiny. He paid no mind to her, but at the moment she wasn't surprised. All his attention was focused on the child in his lap. He cradled her as if she were some delicate treasure that would break with the slightest mishandling. Sadly, that might be true. The girl was in seriously bad shape.

Honestly, if someone had asked her yesterday, she would have said that Knives wasn't capable of any of the softer emotions. Even his love for his brother was a cold thing, seemingly based more on familial bonds than any deep affection for Vash. But looking at his face now, at the concern etched on his brow and the fear in his eyes as her looked on at the child's pallor, she was being forced to revise her opinions. If that wasn't the look a concerned father would give his child, she had never seen it. 

The thought that Knives might have a gentler side unnerved her. It made him more human, more like a person. He was easier to hate, easier to loathe when she thought that he was just a monster. She could fear him, despise him, but she never felt the need to understand him. He was evil; that was all she needed to know. Ice cold evil. But looking at him now she could only see traces of the horrible man she had been forced to know. It was as if she was made to see another person inside the body that she knew. This man confused her, shook her. She didn't know him, but she still feared that he would be dangerous.

His eyes were raised from the girl's prone body, and he sought Vash's gaze, looking for some reassurance. Vash still held the girl's hand, slowly stroking from the wrist to the fingers, trying to coax some reaction from their flaccid state. Ace seemed too tired to do more than blink, too drained to labor at anything beyond breathing. 

And what slow, strained breaths they were. Each was pulled into straining lungs, each exhalation a slow seep of air that stopped with an unhealthy gurgle. The cup of water Meryl had fetched sat by her left knee, mostly untouched. The girl was too tired to swallow without choking, and the effort when they had tried left her even paler than she had been to begin with. 

Meryl bit back a sigh and wished that Millie was there. She would know what to do. When it came to children, Mille knew everything. She knew everything, and she stayed calm. The three of them were fighting back panic, she could feel it, the tension that crawled on their skins and leapt from one to another. She had a feeling that their near panic was doing nothing for the girl, but she couldn't help herself. She just looked so sad, lying there, maybe dying, and none of them could do anything at all.

She looked back at her hands, saw them twisting the hem of her shirt, then looked out over the oasis. The flash of green caught her eye, as did that woman.

Kiley.

Her mouth twisted, but she didn't notice. That woman. That killer. She had heard what had happened outside of December, had seen Vash's face fall as he learned that she had attacked a group of travelers after stealing the child. Ruthless. She could see the evidence of that in the tight set of her mouth, in the lines around her eyes. The perfect sort of person to be hanging around with Knives. 

The woman had closed her eyes, divorcing herself from the drama on the other side of the oasis. She obviously didn't care what happened to Ace; she had likely only taken the girl because Knives had ordered her to. The thought enraged her. She found herself stalking over to her before she even realized that she had stood up.

"Don't you care?" she demanded as she reached her. The woman didn't even open her eyes. "That little girl is dying, and you can't even be bothered to sit by her. You just laze about here, by yourself, unconcerned."

Kiley didn't even bother to open her eyes. Meryl suppressed the urge to slap her, but did grab her by the collar and shake her. "She's dying! Are you heartless?"

The eyes finally opened. Their depths were clouded, and Meryl stopped her actions. 

"What am I supposed to do to help?" Kiley asked.

"You're the miracle worker. Work a miracle. Make her get better." She was surprised to hear a dry laugh. 

"Miracle? I don't do miracles. Much too godly for a person like me."

"Are you saying you can't do anything to help?"

Kiley closed her eyes again, and said nothing. Meryl counted the heartbeats that slid by. One, then five, then fifteen, and still the woman stayed silent. Then she sighed and opened her eyes again.

"I'll see what I can do," she said, "but I can promise nothing. I'm only human." And if her mouth twisted on those last words, Meryl didn't see it. Her eyes had turned again towards the poor, sick child, and she hoped that they would not arrive too late.


	62. Saving Ace

*grumbles* Vash, Vash, Vash…. All you guys want is Vash. 

*******************************************************************************

Kiley pulled herself to her feet. She was a little less shaky than she had been a few minutes ago, but she still felt like crap. She slowly sauntered after Meryl, slowly because she couldn't move faster, and sauntering because she had learned long ago that she could keep her feet easiest when tired if she adopted a rolling gait. Meryl turned and shot her a dirty look as she didn't move briskly, but she decided to keep how tired she was a secret as long as she could.

She knew that passing out at the end of this endeavor was going to prove how weak she really was, and she hoped that it wouldn't be held against her. Mentally she shrugged. They would probably just keep on ignoring her, so there would be no problem. As long as she remembered how to breathe she would make out ok.

Meryl reached the tableau almost a minute before Kiley ambled up, hands thrust deep in pockets. She looked down at Ace, saw what trouble she had just breathing, and sighed.

"I told her she was too young for this," she said, shaking her head and waiting for her knees to quit shaking enough for her to sit down without collapsing in the middle of the process. 

Knives looked up and his eyes were full of pain and irritation. "It's about time you showed up. What took you so long?" he demanded.

"I got shot, Knives."

Realization dawned in his eyes, and she smiled wryly as she realized that he had forgotten. He assessed her condition, and finding nothing visibly wrong huffed, "Must have just grazed you."

She didn't correct him, but let her legs fold underneath her. She picked up Ace's other hand and looked at the girl's eyes. The pupils were dilated, the lids themselves open wide enough that she could see a thin rim of white around the iris. Sweat beaded her brow as her body labored just to keep alive. Kiley shook her head slowly. The girl needed energy, and she had none to give her. She knew just how close her reserves were to tapping out. If she tried to help the girl as she was, it would kill her.

She looked to Knives. "I'm going to need your help for this," she started.

"Anything," he interrupted.

"You sure? I can do anything?"

"Yes. If you overstep yourself, I'll let you know later, but right now you have to help her." His eyes were full of pain; he feared losing the girl.

She nodded. "Then give me your hand." 

"Me too." Vash's quiet voice surprised her, made her jump. She looked into his eyes, started, and read concern there. They were eyes that she could have easily gotten lost in, eyes whose depths drew her attention, her curiosity. He blinked and flushed, and she realized that she had been staring. "I mean, if I can help. Use me, too."

She shook her head slightly to clear it. Nothing like being tired to cloud your thoughts. "Fine. Hold your brother's hand, and relax. Whatever you do, whatever you feel, don't tense up. This will feel a bit… odd, but it's the only thing I can think of that will help."

"What are you going to do?" asked Meryl. Kiley responded without looking up. 

"She's used up too much energy; her body can't adjust to it's loss. I'm going to take some from these two and share it with her."

"Why can't you just do it? Is it a plant thing?"

Kiley shook her head, then met Meryl's eyes. "No. Normally I'd be able to do something like this on my own, but I'm just too tired. I don't have any energy to spare. Knives could do something like this on his own, if he hadn't decided that killing was much more important to learn than healing," she added, unable to resist the little dig.

He didn't say anything, but his fingers tightened painfully on hers. She realized that she was stalling, that she was afraid to start. Acknowledging the fear, she forced herself past it, opened up a conduit from her to Knives, and through him to his brother, then started to leech energy off of them.

Dimly she heard Vash's tight indrawn breath, felt Knives' hand tighten of hers even more, but theses things were of no concern. She carefully harvested energy from the two brothers, taking what they could spare. She took and took and took until she felt Knives begin to shiver, and then she released it into Ace's body. 

First she bolstered the child's heart, easing it's labors. As her pulse steadied, many of her other problems grew easier. Her body quit fighting against itself for the few remaining bits of energy and accepted the flood that she carefully nursed in. Ace's breathing eased as she stopped having to struggle to get her ribcage to move, and color began to rise back in her cheeks. She moved from an extremely unhealthy pallor to looking only slightly wan before Kiley ran out of energy to help her with. 

Grimly, she broke the link, first from Vash to Knives, then from Knives to her, and finally from her to Ace. The spilt second that she alone was linked to Ace nearly did her in. She dropped her hand and buried hers in her lap, trying to hide the reaction, swallowing quickly to stop the bile from coming up and disgusting everyone.

She looked at everyone's face, the person with the most color being Meryl and her flushed cheeks. Vash looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. Knives looked much like he normally did, only a little paler then she had even seen him. Ace seemed much better, and a small smile teased its way around Kiley's eyes as she saw how improved the girl was. Then she closed her eyes and nearly fell over as she leaned back in the sand. Nothing had ever felt as good as not doing anything did right then. 


	63. What is going on?

Vash shook his head and looked at his hand. It tingled oddly, almost like the circulation had been cut off, but not quite. He felt oddly weak, as if he had run for miles then decided to climb fifty flights of stairs, but he didn't feel bad. Just… tired. He wondered just what had happened, just then. Somehow that lady had transferred energy from him and his brother to the girl, but he couldn't for the life of him say just what she had done. Whatever it had been, the actions she took teased at the back of his mind, like they were something he recognized or should have already known. He shrugged the feeling off, clenching and unclenching his fist until he worked the tingling away.

His eyes traveled to the child in his brother's lap, and he stifled a pang of jealousy. The girl had wrapped her arms around him and was crying her eyes out, obviously remorseful, though Vash couldn't tell if it was for almost killing Meryl or for almost dying in the attempt. He quashed that thought as soon as it surfaced. The girl was no more than a child. Of course she wasn't a killer yet. He wouldn't even think such things if she wasn't around his brother. It wasn't fair to her to suspect her only because she accompanied Knives. 

Knives. There was a puzzle right there. He had never seen his brother look so concerned. When the child was lying there, laboring to breathe, the look of frustration on his brother's face was tempered by a frantic desire to make things better. The cold, icy calm that Knives normally used to hold the world at bay had disappeared. His emotions were written out on his face for all the world to see. Well, all the world that had any experience in dealing with his brother. 

Seeing the two of them, seeing the concern on his brother's face, something deep in his heart relaxed. He wasn't fool enough to think that this meant very much. Knives was probably still on his crusade. He still likely hated all humans. But, his heart wasn't completely closed off to the entire world anymore, and he couldn't help the hope that thought engendered in him. His brother had been too long with no one. No one to love, no one to care for. Now this girl seemed to have won a place in his heart.

No, this probably didn't mean as much as he hoped that it did. The girl had tried to kill Meryl, so she obviously was no life revering pacifist. He wasn't going to judge her for the attempt; how could he? But hopefully she would see that her actions were wrong, and that life was precious. Things like that had happened before. 

He wished he knew what was going on here. Knives, Ace, Kiley, how had they all gotten together? Ace, she was obviously the child kidnapped from December. Kiley, he had never heard of before. She was a puzzle, an enigma. Obviously skilled, she had knocked Meryl to the ground like she had done things like that before. She hadn't hesitated a moment before putting herself in the line of fire, willing to take injury that another might be saved.

That wasn't a common response to danger. Most people ran from it. Some stayed to fight it. A few tried to save others from it. But very few ever acted as a living shield, throwing themselves in the path of danger to block it from another. It was an incredibly selfless act, and she had done it as if it were nothing. 

He looked over at her. She had all but collapsed in the sand after doing… whatever it was she had done. She looked absolutely exhausted. Vash pushed himself to his hands and knees and crawled around the child.

"Hello there," he said softly. "I'm Vash."

She opened one eye a slit. "I know," she said flatly. 

He wasn't entirely sure what he should say to that. She didn't seem very friendly. Of course, she looked very tired, too, so that might be why she was acting so surly. 

He tried again. "You do some neat tricks."

She closed her eye. "Tricks are fake. That stuff was real."

This time he knew he was being rebuffed. Slightly hurt, he wondered what her problem was. 

Oh.

"Thank you," he said softly. "Thank you for saving Meryl's life."

She opened her eyes, then shifted them over to meet his. "No problem. Happy," her voice added an odd emphasis to the word, "to help."

He cocked his head to the side, thinking for a moment. "People don't give you thanks very often, do they?"

Something flicked deep in her eyes, but he couldn't read what it was. "No. It's that obvious?"

"I'd think if they did you would be better at accepting them. Practice and all that."

"Hmm." She fell silent and closed her eyes again.

Vash tried a different topic. "You shouldn't sleep out here in the sun. You'll burn."

She tried to mumble something, but failed. 

Vash looked at her more closely, seeing the gray pallor that lay under her tan, saw how shallow her breathing had grown. Worried, he remembered that she had been shot. She might be losing too much blood! He lifted her shirt and sat there, shocked at what he saw. 

There was no wound. What there was, a small pink region of new flesh, was in a place that could have killed her. Should have killed her, really. He had no idea that Meryl had shot her there.

A sharp pain in his head told him that Meryl had noticed what he was doing.

"Put her shirt down, you pervert!" she hissed in his ear.

"Meryl," he whined, then grew serious. "Look." He pointed to the mark on her stomach. "Did you know you had shot her there?" He glanced over at her.

"No," she responded, not looking at him, voice shaky. "I, I didn't mean too. It was an accident." She buried her head in his shoulder, and he dropped the shirt to stroke her hair. "I know it was. But… she should be dead, with a wound like that. Not…" he looked at her again, noting the pallor and the too tight skin. "Sleeping," he said finally, not wanting to add to Meryl's guilt.


	64. Poor Kiley

Stupid FF.net. 

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Knives held Ace in his lap, trying to comfort the child. She just sat there and sobbed and shook, and he didn't know how to make things better for her. He wanted to, he ached to, but what are you supposed to say to someone who almost threw their life away for nothing? He sat there and whispered, "It's ok," over and over again, feeling useless. He couldn't make her stop shivering, long, body-wracking shakes that never seemed to end. They just went on and on and on, and he couldn't hold her close enough to stop them.

He looked up from the girl, looking for Kiley and hating her at the same moment. Maybe she could help, but he didn't want it. He felt like he was always looking to her to fix things, to make things better. Him, expecting a human to make things better. He knew that if he dwelled on that thought he would grow rather disgusted with himself, so he pushed it away for the moment. 

Actually, though, it was her fault that he had to keep looking to her. If she had only taught him how to do those tricks of hers, then he wouldn't need her. So the fact that he could not help Ace when she needed it most was all Kiley's fault. He glanced up glare at her, and caught his brother looking under her shirt, his woman looking on.

A sudden rage suffused him. "What do you think you're doing," he hissed.

"Did you see where she got shot?" he asked as he dropped her shirt. 

"I was a little more concerned with Ace," he said dismissively. "I'm sure she's fine."

Vash looked at him oddly. "She was shot here," he said, pointing at his stomach. "But there's no wound there."

Knives shrugged. "So?"

"So?" echoed Vash. "She was just shot! How did she do that?"

"It's another one of her little tricks. Nothing to get excited over. I'll be able to do that, too. In a little while. When she finally gets around to teaching me." He scowled at her, conveniently forgetting that he had pushed to learn other things than healing.

"What is she?" asked Meryl.

Knives glared at her and she blanched. He hid an inward smile, glad to know that the female was still afraid of him. "She's an alien."

He watched his brother's face. First, surprise so obvious that it was comical. Then a double take, as he looked at her, then at him to see if he was serious, then back at her. Next, a serious expression. Following, his hands reached out and touched her; stomach, arms, legs, shoulders, breasts. Then he winced, after Meryl hit him on the head again. Knives could never figure out why he put up with such treatment.

"Meryl…"

"Don't even start. No excuse will work this time." She glared at him. Vash cowered comically for a moment, then looked at his brother. His mien grew entirely serious, showcasing his ability to change moods like quicksilver.

"Technically, we're all aliens here. You and me, especially, since we weren't born here."

Knives sighed. "You know that wasn't what I meant."

"Tell me what you did mean, then."

"She's from earth."

Vash's eyes widened. "Really? Does that mean more ships are coming?"

"No. She's not from our earth. She's not from this dimension at all, properly. As I understand it."

"What? How did she get here? When? Where?"

"Who and why, Vash? You sound like a damn essay."

"I know who," he replied sullenly.

"When was a few months ago. Where was in my ship, in one of the maintenance corridors. How… she says she died, and that a being she calls Dream Dancer brought her here."

"Died?"

"That's what she says."

"How did she die?"

"Suicide."

Vash pulled back a bit. "Hmm. Why… why did she end up here? With you?"

Knives shrugged. "No reason I can fathom. Someone must just have a twisted sense of humor."

"But… how does she do those things?"

"She says she's a modified human, a Genalt. She was an assassin, and then a paramedic." He said this offhandedly, dismissively, but he watched Vash's expression carefully. His brother moved away from Kiley, putting some more space between them. Knives made sure he didn't smile.

"Assassin?"

"That's what she says. Killed ten thousand, in some war or another."

"A little thing like her?"

"She's tougher than she looks," he said wryly.

"But that tough? I mean, that's a lot of people. Did she do it all at once?"

"She says it took her ten years. Then she quit."

"Quit?"

"She says it was boring. She wanted a real challenge."

"Killing people was boring?"

"That's what she said."

Vash moved a little farther away. "You always seem to meet the most interesting people," he said neutrally. 

"I had nothing to do with this one. She fell in my lap."

"So why are you out of your ship, then? Did you come out to get Ace?" His attempt to change the subject was painfully obvious, but Knives let it pass.

Knives scowled again. "No. That woman escaped and then I was chasing her. Then she refused to go back to the ship and teach me what she knows."

"So rescuing Ace wasn't planned?"

"No. But I'm glad I did. No plant should be treated the way she was when I found her."

"This is a bit confusing," Vash whined. 

"Everything is confusing for you."

"Hey!" interjected Meryl. "He's just as smart as you are." She started out defending him hotly, but her voice trailed away to almost nothing when Knives glared at her again. She visibly regained her courage and glared back, but he could see her hands tremble. He smiled icily at her, then turned his attention back to his brother.

"Still want to look under her shirt?"

Vash's eyes narrowed. "What? Jealous?"

"Not in the least. I just thought you liked your women all pure and pacifistic. She isn't either."

"I guess that means she's just right for you."


	65. No one likes her

"A human? Don't be disgusting." Knives shook his head, unwilling to even dwell on the thought. Vash was too damn perceptive sometimes. The last thing he needed was his brother meddling in whatever was going on between him and that woman. It was bad enough that he and his woman had shown up, rubbing his face in what that certain perversion might bring him.

He dropped his head so he appeared to be looking at Ace, but instead of watching her he looked at the two of them through his lashes. Meryl stood behind Vash, using him as a shield, but her hand stayed possessively on his shoulder. Vash still had one hand on Kiley, and the other supporting his weight, but he was leaning against her legs. They looked sickeningly cute together. 

He had never expected that their relationship would last this long. With his brother's fear of intimacy, and that woman's stubborn nature, he was sure that their time together would have ended in under five years. But… he hadn't reckoned on what would happen after his brother was no longer chased out of every city he ever entered. With his incarceration in the ship and with that woman looking out for him, his brother was no longer quite as prone to find trouble as he had been. The number of bounty hunters after him had decreased, and Meryl had helped contrive to hide him just by staying near him. After all, a little thing like her wouldn't tag around with the famous outlaw, would she?

And after a decade of only sporadic Stampede sightings, common knowledge held that he was dead. No one would have thought to find the Stampede living quietly on a tree farm iles and iles outside December. No one would think that the happy couple that traveled to see Millie every few years was comprised of her companions from those tumultuous years of traveling the world and destroying much of it.

People had enough trouble convincing themselves that his brother could be even potentially dangerous even after watching him in action. The polite-mannered man with the goofy posture who loved kids… that persona served him well.

And Meryl. Much as he hated that woman, he had a certain grudging respect for her. Anyone who could convince his brother that running away from everything wasn't the way to fix a problem was a near miracle worker. The stubbornness he loathed about her was probably the only virtue that helped her keep his brother near. She had decided that he was the one for her, and that she would do anything to keep him. Even… after… what he had done to her and that other, tall one, she still stuck by his brother. Even knowing that a day like this one would come, one where she had to face him again.

He hated seeing such strength in a vermin. Every time they showed a brief glimpse of being more than they normally were, it added fuel to his brother's arguments that they could be saved. Trained, or taught, or whatever his brother thought might make them different from the capricious creatures that raped and destroyed worlds and peoples. He seemed to think that the rare person like his woman was indicative of the race, rather than superlative. If that word could be applied to a vermin.

No, he knew the true nature of humans. Take and take and take, and when thwarted from their desire to acquire, they turned to violence to get what they wanted. Even this Meryl showed some of the same traits, with her desire to keep his brother near, as if his brother was a commodity that could be kept. The thought made the old, familiar anger rise again, and he lifted his gaze so the woman could see it in his eyes.

He liked seeing her flinch, to see her cringe away slightly. Weak, like all humans. His brother would thank him if he got rid of her, surely. With that thought he allowed a cruel little smile curl around his lips. It was so much fun to tease the humans.

"Stop it, Knives." Vash's voice was harsh.

Knives turned his gaze on his brother, eyes turned innocent in a blink.

"What? Am I not allowed to look at her?"

"Stop trying to scare her."

"I don't think I'm trying to. I think I am," he said, grinning at his brother, dropping the pretense of innocence.

"Stop it anyway. You've done enough to her, and I'm not going to let you hurt her anymore."

"Not even a little bit? For old times sake?" Knives teased.

"No. She's a human being, not a toy for your amusement."

"Only yours?"

"Stop that." Vash sighed, and his voice changed from commanding to pensive. "I guess it's too much to hope that hanging around with a human would teach you that they aren't all as bad as you would like to think." His finger tapped Kiley's leg.

"Please. She's just another vermin. If she didn't know such fun tricks, I'd have killed her months ago. As soon as I have what I want from her, she will die." He ignored Ace's stiffening in his lap. A lesser being might have worried that she would try to stop him when the time to kill the woman came. He knew that she would have learned by then that all vermin must die. Even the pretty ones.

That thought was quickly quashed. 

"You can't just go around killing people. I'm not going to let you. Everyone deserves a chance to change their ways, even her."

Knives interrupted. "Blank ticket to the future? You forget, I heard that pap as well. I just saw it for the drivel it was. You don't coddle a problem and hope it goes away. You take care of it, rid yourself of it. Humans are the problem. Her, your pet, and that tall one, all of them are part of the problem. To rid ourselves of them, well… you never did like solving problems, did you? Just running away from them and hoping they solve themselves without you ever having to make hard choices."


	66. Everyone ignores her

"It's better than making the wrong choices."

Knives glared at his brother, but abstained from picking up the old argument. He turned back to Ace, looked down at her scared blue eyes. He knew that his talk of disposing of Kiley worried the girl, but what was he supposed to do? Admit to Vash that he was growing soft? He would take any softening of his position on the vermin to be a weakening, as if he were admitting that since there were a few humans that didn't especially need killing that the entire race wouldn't need extermination. Of course, convincing Vash that a few humans had needed killing hadn't changed his mind, so why his brother had the temerity to believe that keeping a few humans as pets might mean that he wasn't still trying to kill off the species….

He realized that his scowl was scaring Ace, and that his thoughts were rambling. Abruptly tired of the entire situation, he gathered the girl in his arms and stalked into the shade. Vash and Meryl watched him go, and wondered just what they were supposed to do now.

"Does he seem a little strange to you?" asked Meryl.

"I don't entirely know what's going on," responded Vash, thoughtfully. "But I don't think that we can just leave. You don't have to stay if you don't…"

"After watching you and that woman? I'll stick around, buddy," she interrupted, showing more bravado than good sense.

Vash turned and got up on his knees. His arms snaked up and around Meryl's neck, and he held her close, feeling the trembles she couldn't completely suppress. "It's ok if you want to go."

"Not without you," she mumbled into his hair. "You get into too much trouble without me."

"Only a little. A few cities destroyed, a few towns annihilated."

"See?" she said, sniffing a little. "You do need me. Or at least they do. To keep you in check."

"Exactly," he said with a little smile. "Don't do it for me; do it for the countless innocents."

"Of course I do it for the countless innocents," she said, pushing him back a little. "Why would I do it for you?"

Vash looked up at her with his big, sad eyes, and she had to laugh. "I love you," he said simply.

"I love you, too. Forever." They hugged again.

Kiley, from her prone position at their feet, fought nausea. Not that they weren't being cute, in a cloyingly-attached couple sort of way, but this just wasn't a moment she wanted to be a part of. For one thing, it was obviously a personal moment. And for another… mushy stuff made her gag.

She reviewed what she had managed to catch of the conversation between the brothers, putting them out of her mind, or at least trying to. It was hard to follow when barely clinging to consciousness, but she was pretty sure she had the gist of it.

It was good to know she was useful to a psychopath, really. Nothing like hearing that your skills keep you alive. Nothing quite like the knowledge that your lifespan can be measured by how much you know and how fast you can teach it. Also a happy thought.

She tried to open her eyes, just to see what the world looked like from this vantage point, but it took too much energy. She couldn't feel her fingers or toes anymore, and would have liked to be able to look and see if they were still attached. Not that she thought anyone had been separating them from her body or anything, but she would have liked to have been able to make sure.

She wondered if anyone had noticed that she had stopped breathing. Well, she was still breathing, a little, but not with any regularity. She thought on that for a moment, then wondered if she would prefer no one noticing her at all to people noticing and not caring. On the one hand, she was being completely ignored. That's never a fun feeling. On the other, if she was noticed, then no one cared enough to do anything about it. Or maybe they did notice, but couldn't help at all and so just ignored her.

No, that didn't work…

She had to remind herself to take a breath again. As she struggled to fill her lungs with air, she had the passing thought to be grateful that at least her heart was beating without help. She hadn't been this tired in a long time. And she had never been this ignored while this tired. Had she the energy, she would have smiled at that. For all that she had hated her jobs, they did ensure that she got the best possible treatment after abusing her body like this. Now, basking in the dim light of obscurity, she found herself wishing for her support squad. Or a ventilator, at the very least. Anything that would help her out here.

Another breath. She didn't dwell on the irony of trying so hard to stay alive when she had been ready to let it all go a few minutes ago. She wouldn't have let herself drown. Probably. Most likely. Living was a habit too well ingrained to give over for a fit of depression. Even a big fit. A well-deserved fit. A depression that rivaled any that she had felt before. Even then, she would still try to live.

Just so she could come back and get her revenge… but how was she supposed to get her revenge now? Sorry, Knives. I'm pissed at you because you like me only because I'm a plant? That makes very little sense. I'm mad because you treat me like some sort of slave, or disposable toothbrush, or some other object you can use up and discard? Understandable, but would pointing something like that out make him change? No.

Breathe.

Strangely, she welcomed the weakness in her body. It have her an excuse to not have to think up any solutions to her problems. She could just dwell on them.


	67. As a matter of fact, life just sucks

Meryl laid her head to rest on Vash's shoulder. Everything was going so wrong. Knives wasn't supposed to be here, not like this. She had thought that she would never have to see him again, had hoped that she could live out the rest of her days without his shadow lying over them. But then, there had been Millie's letter, and then the news from town and the old fear had resurfaced. The horror was back, the monster had come out of the closet once more.

Knives. 

She hated herself, hated how his very name could make her shake, she feared him that much. She had thought, when she was younger, that she would never be afraid of anyone. She knew she was tough, knew she was capable. She had been handpicked to find and stop Vash the Stampede, after all. She was one of the best the Bernadelli Insurance Society had to offer, and she had taken pride in the fact. She could face down angry outlaws, confront mobs of townspeople intent on one man's head. A crowd of mind-controlled men intent on her and her partner's death? She had bounced right back, managed to take care of everyone, managed to get everyone to a safe place where they could heal. Another mob intent on blood, but controlled this time by only their own fear? She could handle it, calm them, show them the error of their ways.

She scowled. She had been so sure of herself. She had always managed to rise to the occasion; she had assumed that the same would be the case with Knives. But it hadn't been. Vash had needed to rescue her and Millie from days she would prefer to never have to remember. She had a sneaking suspicion that Vash had struck a deal with his brother that she would not have approved of, but she hadn't asked, and he had never offered the information.

She sighed. Those days, those horrible days where all she could do was cling to whatever shreds of sanity she could gather, those days where her only hope was that Vash would come and save her… she hated that she could be reduced to someone so weak. Knives had systematically stripped her and Millie of every shred of dignity that they had possessed, a process so precise as to be almost clinical. He hadn't needed to; they were well and truly caught, had known it and not resisted. It had just amused him to watch them suffer.

She caught herself shuddering again. She took a deep breath and tried to regain a sense of calm. She was more afraid of her brother-in-law than she was of any other creature in the universe. But she was here all the same, because she knew Vash needed her to be. She was his ground, his center, that which connected him to the rest of the world. Without her, she knew he would just begin to drift through life again instead of living. He would fight his brother, and in a fit of depression stop living again, as if his reluctance to enjoy life were some soft of penance for his brother's misdeeds.

Yes, she knew him well. And she was not about to let that happen to him, no matter what demons she had to face. She scowled. However literally you might want to take that last statement.

Gradually, she noticed that something was wrong with the picture before her. Sure, just seeing that woman made her skin crawl. There was just something wrong with anyone who would remain near Knives for any length of time. Let alone with the way she had been ogling Vash earlier… but there was something wrong. It took her a few moments to figure out what is was.

"Vash? I don't think she's breathing," she whispered, as if saying it quietly might keep it from being true.

"What?" His arms dropped from their accustomed place on her shoulders as he turned to look at Kiley. His right hand hovered flat over her mouth and nose for a moment, then balled into a fist. His eyes met Meryl's. "CPR," he said pretentiously, and leaned over her mouth to begin. 

Meryl knocked him on the back of his head. "You do compressions. I'll take care of that."

He shot her a hurt look but complied. The two of them worked on her for only a few moments before Knives rejoined them, wanting to know what they were doing.

"What did you do to her?" 

"Nothing. She just wasn't breathing."

"Why?"

"How about you ask her? I don't know." Meryl was glad that she had something else to keep her mouth busy. Otherwise, she just knew she would say something she'd regret. A quick look was shot to the shaded area and she saw a very worried looking child. Her heart lurched, and she wondered just what was so special about this woman that someone would…

It hit her then. Knives was actually worried about her. When he pushed her away to take over the her role in trying to revive the woman she relinquished it without a murmur of protest, too stunned over the revelation. Knives… cared about someone? Enough to care if they died?

It didn't fit in with her image of the man. He wasn't supposed to care about anyone. But as she watched him, saw him snarl at Vash as nothing they did could get her to breathe on her own, she couldn't help but see the fear that drove him.

Knives didn't know fear. He couldn't. He was a monster, someone who made others fear him so he would never have to fear anything. Many long, sleepless nights of trying to figure out how someone could be so intrinsically evil had led to that diagnosis. And now, here… somehow that woman had done what no one else in the history of the world had ever managed.

Somehow, she had gotten to Knives.

Knives and Vash worked on her for fifteen very long minutes. Her pulse stayed even, slightly thready and slow, but never grew weaker or threatened to disappear. It wasn't like she was trying to make them worry; the woman was too tired to breathe for herself, that was all. Knives scowled as he leaned over to breathe for her again. This was a problem he didn't know how to fix.

"Maybe we should get her to a hospital?" offered Vash tentatively as his brother again filled the woman's lungs.

"What are they going to do for her?" he growled, panting as he tried to breathe for two. "Hospitals on this planet are worthless."

"Who's fault is that?" asked Vash, mostly rhetorically. Knives glared at him anyway. 

"Am I supposed to care that the humans die?"

Vash raised his hands placatingly. "I'm just saying…"

"Compression, Vash."

Vash put his hands back on her chest and continued. "I'm just saying that actions have consequences, that's all."

"I know this. If we could just get her to my ship…" his voice trailed off and his scowl deepened as the logistics defeated him. Either she would be better or dead long before they could reach their goal. Stupid woman. She should never have let this happen.

Meryl shoved a glass into his hands. He turned his scowl on her. "What, woman?"

"It's sugar water. I thought it might help, if you can get some down her…" her voice barely quavered, but she didn't meet his eyes.

"Sugar?" asked Vash.

"From the top of your donuts," she explained.

"Ah." He looked strangely sad, but got over it. 

Knives waved to his brother to stop compressions for a moment, then lifted Kiley's head into his lap. He slowly dribbled the water into her mouth. Most came out again, but he watched her swallow once, twice, three times before he laid her head down on the sand. The brothers breathed for her again, and then Knives tried again.

The cycle repeated until the water was gone. A critical eye assessed Kiley's condition. Her color might have been a little better, but she still wasn't breathing on her own. 

His gaze darkened as he looked at her. She was doing this just to annoy him. He was sure of it. The next time he leaned over, instead of just breathing into her mouth, he slipped his tongue in. Her eyes flickered and opened almost halfway in shock and surprise. A soft intake of breath pulled past his lips, and he sat up, grimly pleased. She had been faking it, just like he had thought.

Her gaze sought out his eyes, question apparent.

"I got tired of your lazing about," he said coldly.

"….tired…." she breathed, her eyes losing focus.

"We noticed," he said dryly.

"…thanks…"

"You are worthless dead," he told her, scowling. "Besides, the child likes you."

She closed her eyes again. Knives looked on awhile, to make sure that she continued breathing. When his gaze left her, he noticed that his brother and his pet were staring at him. And that his brother was slowly munching on a very sad looking donut.

"What?" he said waspishly.

"Nothing," said Meryl. 

"Nope, nothing," echoed Vash after he swallowed.

"What?" he asked again, this time looking for an answer. Meryl looked off somewhere over his shoulder, than walked past him, giving him a wide berth. He turned to see what she was doing, but she stopped near the child. It was a pathetic and obvious attempt to get to know her. He shook his head and turned his attention back to Vash.

Vash shoved the last of the pastry into his mouth, making an overlarge mouthful. Knives looked on patiently, waiting for his brother to swallow, amused by the look of panic that he saw in his eyes.

"What?" he repeated, quietly, as Vash finally emptied his mouth.

"What what?"

"Don't play the fool."

"Play?"

Knives sighed. "You are obviously thinking something. I want to know what it is."

Vash's gaze drifted up towards the sky. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Avoiding the subject will not make it go away."

"Why not?"

Knives stared at his brother, unwilling to get drawn into verbal procrastination.

Vash sighed and looked down at his hands. "I just never thought I would see you work to save a human. It surprises me and gladdens me at the same time."

"I'm still going to kill her later," he reminded his brother.

"If you say so."

"What?"

"What what?"

"Stop that. What do you mean, if you say so?"

Vash lifted his gaze to meet his brother's. "You worked really hard to save her just now. It just seems hardly believable that you would turn around and kill her later."

Knives shifted uncomfortably. "She is still useful to me now. You fix your tools when they get broken. That's all it is."

"I guess. I suppose it's too much to hope for, that you might change."

"I would only change if I happened to be wrong."

"Oh, like that never happens."

Knives scowled. "It doesn't."

"Oh yeah? What about the time with the truck and the ants?"

"I wasn't wrong. Merely mistaken."

"Sure you were."

"You didn't stop me before I did that. It was your fault too."

"How does that work? It was still your idea."

"It was a good idea…"

"Other than being totally wrong?" Vash grinned. "Sure."

Knives leaned over and pushed his shoulder. "Oh, like you're perfect?"

"Never said I was," he laughed, emphasizing the I. 

Knives sniffed and looked up at the sky. "I'm practically perfect," he said pretentiously.

"Except for the truck and the ants thing."

Knives glance at his brother before scanning the heavens again. "The exception that proves the rule, of course."

"Actually, there was that time with the dogs, too…"mused Vash.

"Hush."

Vash grinned. "That's what family is for. To remind you of these things that might otherwise slip your mind."

"Have I tried to kill you yet today?"

"Actually, yes. You'll have to wait until tomorrow to try again."

"Damn."

The brothers lapsed into a companionable silence. Vash carefully refrained from pointing out that it was their first comfortable moment together in over a hundred years. Maybe it was the fact that both of them were too tired to want to fight, but just being near each other without having to be on the defensive was nice, nicer than words could frame. And since they were guys, they just accepted the moment, needing no words to define it, to hold it to its shape and form something that could be seized. It was enough that it simply was. Sometimes it was best to just let things be what they were.

Knives stopped sitting all hunched over Kiley. He sat up straight, stretched out his spine, then leaned back, arms holding his weight as he looked up to the sky, elbows locked for stability. It seemed like forever and a day had passed since the morning, but the suns were still high overhead. He turned his head slightly so the light from the suns would strike him full on. Eyes closed, he basked in the weak warmth they bestowed on the planet.

He heard Vash shift his weight, cloth rustling against sand. One eye opened a slit to asses the new position. His brother now lay on his stomach, chin propped on the backs of his hands. He looked curiously at Kiley's face, eyes tracing the line of her jaw. Knives turned his head a little more and watched his brother look at the woman. His green eyes held no hint of shame as he stared, but as soon as he caught Knives' eye he blushed and looked away.

"Why stop now?" he asked, a hint of humor laced through his words.

"It's embarrassing, having you stare at me." Vash's tone showed his discomfort.

"But it's alright for you to stare at her?"

"She's not looking back," he mumbled.

"She's not some strange specimen. She's just a human."

"She's sort of pretty," he mused, almost on the topic, but not quite. "But she's really too skinny."

"You only say that because Meryl has put on some weight recently."

"I do not!" Vash's head came up, hands flay on the sand, weight shifted forward to give him more mobility.

"It was a joke," Knives said flatly. "Come to think of it… you look like you have put on a little weight as well. Are only your cheeks getting chubby, or was it rather difficult to squeeze into that body armor this morning, too?"

Vash's eyes narrowed, but he flopped back down into the sand. This time his nose drew close to Kiley's hand, and he examined it in detail. The little hairs on the back of her hand near the wrist seemed to fascinate him.

Knives leaned over to look at her other hand, but could not see what had captured his brother's attention. He lifted his head to ask, and caught Vash grinning at him. "Made you look."

"You are so infantile," he sighed, then lay back into the sand. His thoughts wandered for a few moments, then fixated on a niggling detail. He tried to ignore it, but it would not leave him alone. He closed his eyes tight and suppressed a sigh, then sat up again. He grasped Kiley's hand in his, feeling for warmth in her fingers. Then he felt her neck, and slipped a hand under her shirt, laying it over her heart.

Vash stared at him, eyes open wide. Knives' eyes narrowed in response, and he stood up. 

"What?" asked Vash as he walked away. He sat up and watched his brother get something from the packs at the base of one of the spires. He came back with a brightly patterned blanket, which he proceeded to drape over the prone form of the woman. Surprising his brother even more, he crawled under the blanket with her, cradling her in his arms.

"What are you doing?" whispered Vash. He didn't realize he had spoken out loud until his brother's head lifted from it's place behind Kiley so he could glare at him.

"She said something a while back. Something about how doing too many tricks would send her into energy shock. I think that's what this is, and if so, she needs a bit more help than to be merely sat by while she's unconscious." His head dropped into the sand again. 

Vash reached out his right hand and tentatively grabbed the other edge of the blanket. Waiting for a reaction from his brother that never came, he slid underneath and cradled his body against hers. His brother moved his arm from where it had been lying over her stomach, and he relaxed a little. He wasn't going to be yelled at. Good.

He realized why his brother hadn't felt that the blanket would be enough as the chill from the woman soaked through his armor. Strange to think of someone suffering from hypothermia while lying out in the sun, but that seemed to be the case here. 

"Energy shock?" he asked quietly. 

"I'm not entirely sure what it is. But this is a good bet."

"But…"

Knives sighed, and Vash could feel the heaving of his chest through Kiley. "She uses the same energy for these tricks as she does every other bodily function. It's caloric. She's not like us. She has limits, and she doesn't seem to respect them." 

Vash didn't have to see his brother to know he was scowling. He let that topic drop, and fought with himself, curious beyond good sense, yet still trying to retain a shred of intelligence. It was a long, hard fought battle, but in the end, curiosity won.

Like it always did.

"Knives…" Common sense tried its best to reassert itself, and Vash's voice trailed off. But the damage was already done.

"What?"

"Nothing, really."

"What, Vash?" Knives wasn't going to let him off easily.

He sighed, and gave over the battle. "Why did you kiss her?"

"Why did I what?" asked Knives calmly.

"Um… kiss her? I saw you. I know you did."

"That wasn't a kiss."

"Uh. Ok." Vash didn't know what to say next, so let the subject drop.

Knives, however, couldn't. "I was getting tired of that damn CPR. I began to wonder if she was faking it. So I startled her."

"Faking not breathing?" Vash sat very still, barely breathing the question.

"Well, she started breathing on her own after, so I'd say it worked."

Vash mumbled something.

"Speak up, Vash."

"Nothing."

A heavy silence.

"I just said 'Kiss of life.' That's all."

"It wasn't a kiss. I don't engage in personal contact with vermin."

Another loaded silence.

"The current situation is not exactly what it looks like."

"Of course not, Knives."

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, both brothers trying very hard to not think about what they were doing at the moment.

Time passed, and maybe they dozed, but Vash was suddenly brought back to awareness by a shadow falling over his face. He blinked a few times to clear his vision, then looked up to see the irritated visage of his one true love.

"Just what… do you think you're doing?" she asked him calmly.

"Um… this isn't quite what it looks like."

"That's good. What it looks like would get you in a great deal of trouble. Now tell me just what it is, and we'll see if I have to drag you back to December by your ear or not."

"She's in shock. Her body temperature is very low, and we're trying to keep her warm."

Meryl looked them over critically. "You look like a litter of puppies," she said while she leaned over. She lay one hand on Kiley's forehead, then frowned. "You're right. She's not doing very well." She stood up and brushed her hands, one against the other, a brisk, dismissive movement. Then she turned and walked back to Ace.

Vash craned his neck and watched her go, wondering what had happened between the two of them, to make Meryl so cold. He got a crick in his neck looking after her, so he let it fall back to its former position while he brooded. Hearing his brother chuckle didn't help his mood any.

"She has a big spirit for such a tiny thing," he said musingly. 

Vash stiffened. "What did you say?"

"You heard me." He could also hear the scowl.

"Say it again."

"She has a big spirit for such a tiny thing? What? What is your problem now?"

"Nothing," Vash said, grinning. "I think that is the first time you didn't say something completely and totally nasty about my wife."

A pause. "I hate it when you refer to her in that fashion."

"What? My wife? She is."

"You don't have to rub my nose in it."

"I hardly rub your nose in it. It's not like we get together for family reunions or anything. You hardly ever see her. Which is a good thing," he said, musingly.

"Family reunions? You ever introduce her to the rest of her in-laws? See her turn her head away in fear and revulsion? One of my favorite memories, truly."

"She had never seen a plant angel before. She has gotten over that."

"You don't just get over a phobia, Vash. You carry them with you forever."

"She isn't the person you used to torture. She's grown past that girl."

"Around her, I would say."

Vash sighed. "I wish you wouldn't insult her."

"Why?"

"It's demeaning, both to her, who I love, and to me. You think I don't know that she has weaknesses? I live with her, Knives. I see her every day. I know her much better than you ever could, and you act like I don't know who she is. You're the one who has no place to talk."

"Truth hurts?" asked Knives coldly.

"I have yet to hear you say much that is truth."

Their spat was interrupted by the arrival of Meryl. Her arms were full as she juggled blankets and Ace, carefully managing to not drag or drop either.

"Here," she said, then proceeded to strip the blanket from over the brothers. Both sets of shoulders tightened at the same instant, and two pairs of eyes sought out hers, equally confused.

Despite herself, Meryl laughed. Fight all they want, they still reacted so alike to the basics. It was when things got complicated that they were so different. She frowned, remembering.

"Ace, into Knives' arms," she commanded, then helped rearrange Kiley so that she could remain nestled comfortably between the plants. Then she layered blankets over the group, starting from the feet and working her way up the body, swaddling the group.

"Um, Meryl?" asked Vash. "I'm really hot here."

"Good. Then maybe she'll get warm. We aren't exactly equipped to deal with shock, here, so we're just going to have to improvise." She finished with the pile of blankets, then stood back and eyed them critically. "That will have to do," she proclaimed, then picked up a corner of the pile and slid into Vash's arms. He relaxed after slipping his arms around her.

She had done a good job. The lady finally began to warm up at his back. The heat of their bodies made him drowsy, and his eyes slid closed. He felt Meryl cuddle into his arms, her body arranging itself to fit his with the ease of long practice. He curled around her, then was struck by a passing odd thought.

The woman behind him wasn't relaxed. She was unconscious, but she still managed to hold herself stiffly against them. Why? What had happened that made it impossible for her to be entirely comfortable around others, to never let herself be vulnerable? Was it something his brother had done to her? No, it didn't seem to be. If that were the case, she'd be cringing away from him, but she was equally stiff to everyone. What could have hurt her so much that defensiveness had become an integral part of her very being?

The rest of the day passed, and the night as well. Kiley didn't wake, and the others stayed by her, save for a few trips outside the blankets to take care of personal needs before crawling back. The day had drained everyone. Ace, obviously, was tired because of her ill-conceived action. Her natural exuberance was muted, and she cuddled between Knives and Kiley, willing to rest. Stress had taken its toll on Meryl, stress of the journey, stress of the days before it, stress of the meeting, and just plain old, having-to-deal-with-Knives stress. The chance to curl up in Vash's arms and let go of the day was a blessing to her. Knives and Vash had both been drained by their fight and by what Kiley had taken from them to heal Ace.

The end result was a big, warm pile of sleepiness. The moons rose and set, mostly unheeded, save by the sad soul crawling out into the desert night to take care of personal business. Such moments were quickly concluded, and the warmth of the group was sought again.

It was that fuzzy area between moonset and dawn when Kiley finally awoke. She felt horrible, her head muzzy, her tongue swelled to fill her entire mouth and coated with slime. Her joints ached, her bones ached, her muscles ached, her entire body felt like one big bruise from head to foot. But it meant that she was still alive, so she stifled any complaints she might have been tempted to make.

Carefully, barely moving, she stretched out her muscles, wincing at the pain that movement caused. The waste products, the broken down leftovers of used cells and proteins, made their presence felt. She was too dehydrated for her kidneys to work properly, which left the toxins all over her body. Carefully and slowly, as only a person in pain can move, trying to not wake any of the warm bodies around her, she wriggled out of the cocooned mass of blankets and limbs and crawled over to the water.

She stuck her face in and slowly guzzled as much as her stomach could hold, one slow mouthful at a time. She eased each bit of water past her swollen tongue, carefully letting it trickle down the back of her throat, repeating the process until her stomach was swelled with liquid.

Tired out by the action, she rolled over and watched the last of the stars disappear into the dawn. The chill of the hour seeped into her bones, but she didn't have the energy to crawl back to the group. Her eyes closed of their own accord, and she mused over what she had heard yesterday. The hurtful words, the hateful words… they each stabbed her, little arrows that were shot into her heart.

She drew the pain to her, welcomed it. Pain meant she could feel, meant she wasn't dead inside after all. A moan escaped her, an animal response to hurt too much too bear. She clamped down on the feeling, tried to divorce her heart from the rest of her, but she was too tired to have much success. The sharp, shooting pain of her broken heart was only muted to a dull, throbbing pain.

She couldn't pinpoint the time that she had fallen for Knives, but it was obvious now to her that she had. Maybe it was the way that he never backed down when she got angry. Maybe it was his cute, cautious overtures as he held her in his arms. Maybe it was the way that he got that sad, pensive look when he thought no one saw him. Maybe it was the way he looked when he played with Ace, the way that happiness transformed his features from foreboding to friendly.

Maybe it was just pheromones. Breath hissed out of her in a sigh. But if what she felt was merely a chemical reaction, why did it hurt so much? Why did the thought of having to go out in this world and build a life without him in it give her the chills? Was she too much a coward to face this world on her own? Or had she just found the person she wanted to face it with?

She sighed again. Not that her feelings mattered much. Despite recent developments, she still wasn't a likely recruit to Knives' crusade. What did she care of other plants, other than a bit of pity? She still felt as human as she ever had; her loyalties shouldn't be divided. But… they were. A little. It's hard to ignore the faceless suffering of others when the visage of the sufferer could easily be your own face. Maybe she had been wrong… but that didn't make him right. Slaughter is never right, no matter how pure your motives. 

She closed her eyes more tightly, dismissing images from her past. No, indiscriminate killing is never the answer. But what is? If the plants are needed for survival, what are the humans supposed to do? Just lay down and die? That would never happen, nor should it. 

Why did it have to be just one or the other, plants or humans? Why couldn't there be some other solution? Why did she have to come up with it? 

She was just a killer. Not a bloody genius, fit to solve a problem that spanned centuries. Why didn't someone else come along and come up with the answer? Why did it seem to have to be her? She was no one, knew nothing. Her time here could still be measured in days, and she was supposed to be able to fix things?

Of course, the options facing her if she failed were grim. No one else seemed interested in reconciliation. Only her. There was no one else willing to try. So if she couldn't find a resolution, it would be death and killing all over again. She wasn't willing to let that happen, but equally could not see how she was supposed to be able to stop it from happening.


	68. Things just don't get better

A soft hand on her brow woke her from her doze. Her eyes shot open, her heart racing as she tried to place where she was. A pair of concerned green eyes swam into focus before her, and she relaxed infinitesimally as she recognized Vash. She closed them again as the adrenaline rush had made her head swim. 

"You shouldn't be out here," he chided. "It's cold still."

"Couldn't get back," she croaked. She cleared her throat and continued. "So tired."

"I'm not surprised. You did some amazing things yesterday. Those would tire anyone out. Why, most people couldn't do what you did at all."

She shrugged, uneasy under his gaze. This was Vash the Stampede, for crying out loud. She knew him, and yet didn't know him at all. It was an uncomfortable feeling. This planet was getting to her, doing things to her mind. Trying to hide her discomfort under a layer of irritation, she sighed and glared at him.

"Not amazing," she managed. "Just did it."

He shook his head slightly, eyes never leaving hers. "I saw what that blast did, out in the desert. There's a big patch of glass out there where it hit." He paused, inviting a comment.

She didn't say anything, willing to let him ramble on. He did.

"That was a lot of energy. I didn't know anyone could deflect something like that. I thought it was just, boom, you know? And dead?"

She stayed silent.

"I wanted to thank you for saving Meryl's life. I appreciate that. I'm sorry that you and she don't seem to have gotten off to a good start. She's really nice when you get to know her, she is."

"She shot me."

"It was an accident. She's very sorry."

"It would be nice if she said that." Idly, she realized that it was odd to conduct an argument lying flat on your back. Made things harder. She tried to sit up but couldn't quite manage on her own. Vash leaned over and lifted her upper body, tucking her against his chest and supporting her with one arm around her.

She couldn't help but be aware of the warmth and closeness of him. Very few men had ever held her close over her life, and this one was Vash, which made the feeling even more weird. Heat seeped into her and her head naturally sagged back against his chest. A long, slow sigh escaped her as she relaxed against him.

Then she stiffened again, as the oddness of the situation and her aversion to close personal contact overwhelmed the pleasure she took. She struggled against him, and he let go.

"What?" he asked, a confused and hurt look in his eyes.

She shook her head, looking for words that wouldn't come out too harshly. "I just don't like to be touched," she finally managed. She ended up sitting hunched over her lap, her neck lolling forward a bit as she rocked with the beat of her heart.

"I'm hungry," she finally managed, looking for anything to say that might break the silence between them.

"Donut?" he asked brightly, painfully eager to please.

"Sure," she said, not so much wanting a pastry as wanting to make him feel better.

He jumped up and ran off, back at her side in less than a moment. He offered one slightly squished donut on an open palm. She took it daintily and devoured it in a bite.

The started look on his face was priceless. She laughed. He looked at the empty spot on his palm then at her, his eyes sad, then he laughed as he met her eyes again. 

"You are hungry," he commented, a grin splitting his face.

"Incredibly," she affirmed.

He scampered off and came back quickly, dragging his pack behind. He would take out an item of food, lay it flat on his palm, and goggle at the speed with which she devoured it. She could feel the food as it digested quickly, imagined that she could feel her blood sugar level rising, could feel her body sucking calories and nutrients out of her stomach. After almost ten minutes of devouring food she sat back, replete. Some color had leeched into her cheeks, and at some point she had even managed to sit up straight.

Vash looked at her bemusedly, then into his bag with a lost expression on his face. "There's not much left in here."

"Sorry," she said, flushed.

"Don't be. If I didn't want you to have it, I wouldn't have given it to you," he said, slightly serious.

"But I ate all your food," she protested.

"Then I'll get more. Food is not difficult to replace," he told her, mock sternly.

She sighed, too full to want to argue. "Thank you," she said simply, remembering her manners like she always did: a minute later than she really ought.

"No, thank you," he said, suddenly serious. "You… I can't say I understand much about you, but you saved my wife's life. That means a lot to me."

"It was nothing. Habit. It wasn't anything special." She protested the gratitude, not feeling worthy of it. She hadn't done anything that she didn't normally do. It wasn't like she had saved Meryl because she knew or liked the woman. It was just because she was there, and then danger was coming at her… She wished she could find the words that would put her action in it's proper light, but they escaped her. 

"It was very special to me," he said, grasping her chin and forcing her to meet his eyes. She glanced at them, then darted her gaze away, suddenly finding the mole by his eye fascinating. He waited a moment, but she kept her eyes averted. Releasing her, he sighed, then stood.

"You shouldn't act like what you did means nothing."

She looked at her hands and waited until after he had left before she whispered the only wisdom she had at them.

"It did mean nothing. Everything does."


	69. As a matter of fact, they get worse

*sings the angst song*

*******************************************************************************

Vash came back a few moments later, scooped her up, and dropped her back under the pile of blankets. She considered protesting, but fell back asleep instead. Her last conscious memory was of Ace squirming around behind her, and somehow ending up in her arms. Knives lay stiffly against her back, but she didn't mind. He was still warm.

When she awoke again, Vash and Meryl had left. She asked Knives what had happened to them, and he merely scowled at her. 

"You ate all their food," he said accusingly.

She flushed, but said nothing. He offered, she thought. I didn't realize I was eating it all. They could have had some of ours. Words and excuses flowed through her mind, but she vocalized nothing. She was still mad at him. 

She sat up slowly, body still sore. Grimly, she stretched muscles gone tight, shoulders knotted with tension and pain. She'd have given much right then for a massage, but managed to at least regain a semblance of mobility on her own. She stood and shakily walked over to the pool, then drank her fill. She sat at the end with her hands dangling in the water, wondering at the feel of it on her skin.

Wet. Such a concept. She felt the tension on the water, could feel it pull around her, a barrier between what she could see and what she felt. Looking around, she could almost sense a similar barrier between her and the world. She knew it was just exhaustion, just a weary mind misinterpreting signals from the senses, but she disliked the feeling all the same.

She didn't belong here. She didn't belong on this planet, didn't belong in this body, didn't belong anywhere. If there was an afterlife, she was sure that this wasn't supposed to be it.

But then how different from hell was this? If she deserved a place of pain and suffering, had she not found it here? Never one to be properly dismayed at the thought of a conventional purgatory, she had scoffed at the notion of physical pain and torment as a means of correction. She knew pain of the body too well to be afraid of it. 

But this was a hell of the heart, and she was finding that she knew this sort of pain not at all. She had blithely let herself get close to people, and look what they, no, be precise, he, did. 

Not worth this… she dwelled on that. Was she worth so little, then? Not that she had really wanted Ace to get hurt, but the child was only trying to protect her. From her vantage, she could not see that Kiley was taunting Meryl, could not see that she was in control of the situation. She merely thought that her friend was threatened, and responded accordingly. 

The thought of Ace getting hurt over her turned her stomach, but she accepted that pain came when you tried to protect those you loved. Knives… obviously didn't feel that she was worth being loved. She was a fool to have ever believed differently. 

"What is your problem?" The irritated voice cut into her reverie. Well… think of the devil and he appears.

"You," she said, responding without thinking.

"Me? What did I do?" The question did not truly ask for an answer, but she supplied one anyway.

"You…" she struggled to find words to cover the hole in her chest. "You didn't care," she finished up lamely.

He sniffed, and looked past her. "Why should I care about a vermin?"

"I guess it's all just my problem then, isn't it?" Stupid her, for ever thinking differently.

"No."

"No?" Her heart soared.

"I'm pissed at you as well."

"Me? What did I do?" Her heart fell again, and the pain was worse as it hit the floor once more.

His gaze shifted back to her, and she was surprised by the malice she saw there. "You used me."

She blinked, thinking furiously. "What?"

"When you made that shield thing. You used me, me and Vash."

She thought back frantically. "I did. I'm sorry. Would you have rather I died?"

His eyes narrowed. "I'm not some power source, for you to tap into at will."

The light went off. "Oh." Her eyes narrowed as she thought. "Does it seem like I'm going to make a habit of such behavior? Had I ever done it before?"

"You shouldn't have done it at all."

"Would you rather I had died?" she asked again, not rhetorically this time. "It's normal for me to pull from the surrounding area when I need more power. Normally, there's a biosystem in place for me to grab from, but this benighted planet doesn't support enough life." She grabbed a handful of sand and watched it trickle through her fingers, then brushed at what had stuck to her still damp skin.

"Why me? Why did you have to suck at me?"

She looked up at him. "You don't get it, do you? You absolutely reek of power. You plants… hold enough life in you to make this planet seem almost as alive as earth."

"So? It's my life! What right have you to any of it!" He leaned down and grabbed her shoulders.

She looked in his eyes. "You were happy to share with Ace."

"Ace is worth saving. You and my brother's pet… why should I care if you live or die?" He punctuated the question with a shake, then let her go.

"All this time," she mused, then fell silent.

"What?"

"All this time together… and you still hate me so much. What did I do to you?"

"I don't hate you," he said, glaring at her.

"No? Then what is your problem?"

"You aren't worthy of my hate. You aren't worthy of my time. You are nothing." He turned and walked away, picked up Ace, held her close. He asked her something, something Kiley couldn't catch, but the girl let out a cry of dismay and squirmed in his arms. 


	70. Heartbreak

Ace reached the ground and ran to Kiley, throwing her arms around her neck. Kiley slipped her arms around the girl's waist as she turned back to Knives. Something in her heart sank even lower as she anticipated what was to come.

"No." Ace's voice was loud and clear, demanding that she be listened to and not ignored. 

Knives didn't even turn and look at her, but walked over to his pack and began tossing things in.

"No!" she repeated, to no further effect. 

She let her hands fall from around Kiley's neck, soft, sweaty palms leaving trails of stress as she moved away. Running back to Knives, she tugged on his sleeve. "No. No. No." She repeated the word, each iteration getting a little softer, a little more forlorn. Big, sad eyes were turned on him, but to no avail.

Knives shook her off. "You seem to be under the delusion that you are in control here, child. She may coddle you; I will not."

Kiley got up from where she sat and sauntered casually over to where Knives was packing. She didn't care. She didn't. She was just going to offer to help him go.

"So, you're just going to run away now?"

He paused, hand clenching into a fist as it reached for a sock. He turned and looked up at her. "I am tired of your crap. Your whining, your demands, you."

"So is this it, then? You're packing up and leaving?"

"Exactly."

"Good."

"What?"

"Does this mean you're finally going to leave me alone? No more chasing me across half the planet in a futile bid to become more dangerous than you already are?"

"Yes," he said firmly. "Something rather exactly like that."

"There is a god," she said facetiously, then turned and walked back to sit by the pool.

"What? Aren't you going to try to convince me to stay?" He half-stood to go after her, but stopped and returned to his packing. The sooner he finished this, the sooner he could be gone.

"If you assume I would want you around. Spoiled brat like you, I'm better off alone."

"Stubborn witch." His hands kept moving as his vision darkened.

"Pissy plant-boy."

"Freak."

"Right back atcha, babe."

He sniffed. The clasps on his bag were shut firmly, the harsh sound echoing in an area gone eerily silent.

"Come, Ace," he said, reaching out a hand.

"No," she said again, cringing back.

"You will come with me. I'm family. She is nothing."

Ace looked between the two. Kiley resolutely didn't meet her eyes, but only stared down at the water by her knees. If she wanted to stay, fine. But she wasn't going to coerce her at all. Like she knew how to raise a child, anyway. It would be best if she left, if they both left, left her alone. Quiet sobs began to fill the air. With a heartbreaking wail, Ace made her choice.

Knives.

Kiley told herself that she didn't care. That the look of triumph in Knives' eyes meant nothing to her. That she was glad that he was leaving, that they both were leaving. That she didn't need either of them. That she didn't want either of them. She didn't care about them, just like they didn't care about her. She just looked at the water, put her hands in the water, felt the water as she lifted her hands in and out. The water was fascinating. The water was everything. If she could just look at the water she wouldn't have to watch them go away, watch them leave her. Alone. Like she deserved.

A hand at the back of her neck pushed her face in the water. Hate exploded through her, hate and a frantic need to cause as much pain as possible. 

Her hands scrambled back behind her, grabbing for some sort of purchase. She got one knee under her chest and used her leg muscles to force her head up out of the water, slowly moving into a crouching position. One hand raked across Knives' face. The pain caused his grip to slacken for an instant, and she used it to turn and grab him at the stomach and bring him down.

His hand tangled in her hair and pulled her neck back, but she fought on, her hands traveling up his body until they pressed around his neck. His off hand was freed from where it had been trapped under his body and pulled at hers. The grip on her neck loosened as he tried to shift his hand around to stop her windpipe, but she used the fraction of a second to tuck her chin down and deny him.

Instead, his hand went to hers at his throat and joined the other in prying her fingers off. She felt her grip slipping, so, with one quick push, forced his head back in the sand. The impact stunned him slightly. She used the split second that afforded her to place both hands over his heart.

She almost killed him right then, almost exploded his heart in his chest, but some niggling remainder of conscience finally managed to break through her rage. Horrified at what she had almost done, she stood off from him. Her eyes were wide enough to show whites all around the iris as she looked down at him, entirely heartbroken. 

He had no such problems. After a second to reorient himself, he stood. 

"You…" he rasped through his sore throat. He swallowed painfully, then continued. "You are not worth my time to kill." He raised his hand and threw a roundhouse punch at her head. He had a split second to recognize the dumb dismay in her eyes before he hit her. She crumpled to the ground and lay there, unmoving save for shallow breathing.

He panted, swaying slightly on his feet, and debated killing her. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, but he finally wheeled about and stalked back to where he had left Ace.


	71. Death in the sands

Kiley lay on her back in the sand and stared at the suns. She knew that something was wrong, in that not right sort of way that wrong is. She knew this because the suns kept jumping forward in the sky, and she knew that she wasn't sleeping. Maybe she was passing out. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe the hit to her head had shaken things, broken things. Maybe not.

She really didn't care.

She couldn't believe what had happened. She could not convince her mind that this morning had happened. Every time she tried, the suns would end up leaping forward again. Knives, and Ace, gone? Impossible. She could hardly remember not having the two of them around. Every time she tried to conceive it, the planet just grew too large in her mind, and she drew too small. They… she… they belonged together. They did… didn't they?

Where were they? Why? Why did they have to leave? 

She was evil. She had almost killed Knives.

She loved him.

She killed him.

No, she hadn't… he was still alive. But gone. 

How could they do this to her? She listened for the thud of her heart in her chest. Surely it was ripped out… no. There it went. Thump-thump, just as always. Like things hadn't changed so utterly. She spent a few moments hating her heart.

It didn't care; just continued to pump blood as usual. 

Hmph. 

She tried to think about the morning, but her mind skittered away from it again.

The suns jumped. She tried to remember what had happened.

They jumped again. She couldn't see them anymore.

That meant hours had passed.

Hours since she had almost killed him.

She could still feel his heart under her hands, could still feel herself reaching out towards him, ready to still that beat.

Still a killer. Always a killer.

How could she profess to love someone and still be so quick to end their life?

How could she have tried to kill him?

She'd be better off dead.

Maybe… if she never moved again, if she let the desert cover her…

A fitting end. Buried in sand. Left behind like the refuse, the trash she was. Better for the world, to not have her in it. 

Too much violence in her soul, like a stain that could never be erased. Too much blood spilled by her hands for her to ever stop. A cycle unending, death upon death upon death. Hers the only stop, the only quit to the horror.

Except even death wasn't an escape. The thought of having to go through something like this all over again… she couldn't handle it.

But she couldn't move, either.

She ached to have this all taken from her. To seek oblivion, to be removed from herself… She wanted to disappear from mind, memory, from ever having been. Things would be better that way. To save people from the misery of ever having to know her, to keep her away from that which her presence would inevitably corrupt. 

She was evil. Evil without redemption, without hope of salvation. She had hoped, prayed, desired to change, but she never would. Killer. Forever.

Killer that even other killers shunned.

A Kiley indeed.

Living Death. Again… no, always. A role she took on that seeped into her very soul, assassin. Murderer. Soaked in blood. A weapon of destruction, nothing more. Never more. Only the simplest of things, only the commonest of beings. Death, destruction, all that was left to her. All that was her. All that she would ever be. 

She felt grains of sand blowing against her face, each soft patter of silicon against flesh a blow to her soul. She imagined each was the revenge of a victim, and began to flinch when the breeze blew too many against her flesh. 

How could she? How could she?

There were so many additions to that question. How could she have been left behind? How could she have almost killed him? How could she love him? How could she disappear into nothingness? How could she have ever believed that she could change?

She bared the question down to its essential three words. How could she. How… a query of process. Could… a word of actionable being. She… a fool, a fool who was nothing. 

Nothing. Nothing made sense. She was still so tired… couldn't he have waited? Waited until after she felt better? Why did he have to leave her now? Now, when… now, never… how could he leave?

Did he hate her that much?

Why couldn't he have killed her?

Did he hate her so much that he wanted to leave her alive? To lay here, steeped in misery and depression, self-hate and self-pity? 

Did he just not care? How could he not? She was… he thought she was human. He should have killed her.

She was more than half-tempted to follow him and demand her death. But that would be silly and much too overdramatic. Much easier to just lay here and slip under the sands. No fuss, no one need care. Just an anonymous set of bones to be bleached by the sun, emerging in five years or ten to be stripped of desiccated flesh by the wind. A fitting end, to be dried up into nothingness. A life that stole life from others, stolen from this body by the elements. Almost romantic, if you thought about it.

Perhaps she could join her spirit to the wind, to roll howling over a dead world. Where she so aptly belonged. Left alone, unloved, undesired, rushing over the sands that cradled her remains.

The remains of a killer. A despised, pathetic loser who could never change, never grow, never leave her past behind. Death lay entwined with her soul like some noxious vine, its thorns spearing her, making her bleed out violence. 

She was a killer. 

She was alone.

She deserved it.


	72. A new hope

Her next rational thought was one of shock and surprise. 

Sputtering, she fought to breathe in a world gone wet. Her arms lashed out and her left fist connected with something. She was released and she drew her face out of the water.

"Ow! Ow ow ow ow ow…" 

She blinked hard a few times, clearing her vision, but even before her eyes focused she saw the scene.

"Sorry, Vash," she croaked.

"You didn't have to hit me," he whined nasally, one hand firmly clasped to his nose, the other waving at her in a warding gesture.

"You didn't have to try to drown me," she shot back, shaking her head, trying to get water out of her ears. Somehow, she seemed to be a lot more wet than just a quick dip in the pool would account for…

"Yes, he did," chimed up Meryl. "We couldn't get you to wake up. You just lay there and didn't respond to anything." She changed the subject quickly. "Just what's going on here?"

"What does it look like?" Kiley said waspishly. "Knives and Ace left."

"They what?"

"They left. He said he was," her voice threatened to break, but she continued. "He said he was tired of me. Of dealing with me. So he took her, and she went with him, and they left me here."

"You didn't try to go with them?" she asked.

"Why? They don't want me. Why should I go after them?"

"Because you're miserable here?"

"It's better if I'm miserable there?"

Meryl shook her head. "There's one thing you need to understand about these brothers," she started.

"We're cowards," finished Vash, head titled back to staunch the nosebleed. "Total cowards."

Kiley looked at him in shock.

"There's nothing we won't do to avoid getting close to someone." 

She continued to stare, nonplussed.

"Nothing like being betrayed as a child to make future relationships difficult." He tried to affect a thoughtful pose, one hand under chin, but the hand still pressed to his nose ruined the effect.

She couldn't help it. She giggled.

He rolled his eyes at her, asking silently why she refused to take him seriously. "We are very good at running whenever we think that things might be getting… serious."

She sighed, and looked at her toes. "I… don't think that is the case here. He… I… he thinks I'm scum."

"Vermin. You can't have spent this much time with him and not picked up on the correct terminology."

She nodded, despondent.

Vash continued. "If he didn't like you, he would still be here. But you are a threat to him, to the way he wants to be, so he ran."

She perked up for a moment, but thought about what he said, really thought about it, and her face fell again.

"He tried to kill me," she explained. "And I almost killed him."

"He tries to kill everybody. This way you know you have his attention."

"But I almost killed him. I had my hands… and I almost stopped his heart…" She sighed and fell back to lay in the sand.

"Not again, lady," said Meryl as she hauled her up by the front of her shirt.

Kiley rolled her eyes buy sat on her own. She ended up hunched over her knees, staring at the sand and…

A sharp hit to the back of her head drew her back to herself again.

"What?"

"Quit sulking."

"I'm not sulking!" she denied. "I'm… I'm… I am sulking, aren't I?" she agreed wryly. "But you would sulk, too."

"No I wouldn't. Didn't. I ran after him and pestered him into submission when he pulled that trick on me." Meryl hooked a thumb over her shoulder. Vash waved, then took his hand gingerly from his nose.

"It's a good thing she's stubborn," he agreed. "Like I said, my brother and I are cowards."

Kiley sighed. "He hates me."

"No he doesn't."

"He said as much this morning."

"You didn't see him yesterday. He could hardly take his eyes from you, he was so worried. But he didn't want to stare while we were looking, so he kept shooting these little glances when he thought we weren't paying attention. It was really cute."

"Really?"

"Really." They both nodded firmly.

"Huh. I thought everybody just ignored me." 

"Nope. We didn't want to bother you while you were doing… that whatever it was you did. But we kept an eye on you."

"Oh."

"He cares. We both can tell. We're both surprised beyond the grasp of words, but it's obvious to anyone who knows my brother well that he's enamored of you."

"Oh." She sat, deep in thought.

"So what are you going to do about it?" prompted Meryl.

"Follow him?"

"This isn't a test, girl. Don't look to us to judge your answer."

"I'm going to follow him," she said firmly.

Vash grinned. "Good."

The decision brought with it a sudden rush of energy, and she stood and walked over to pack. "What are you two going to do? Are you going to come with me?"

"We'll wait a bit, then follow. Our presence seems to have put a damper on Knives' ability to show affection," Kiley laughed, and Meryl continued with a smile, "so we'll wait a week then start after you. Sound good?"

"Sounds good." Kiley finished throwing things in her pack, then walked back to the pool to fill her canteen. "Thanks, guys," she said simply, then threw her arms around Meryl and squeezed. Meryl squirmed in her embrace, and Vash merely tentatively patted her back when she hugged him. "This means a lot to me."

She set out on her way to the ship. Vash and Meryl watched her go, Vash's arm slipping around her waist. 

"Did we do the right thing?" Meryl asked quietly. "I'm not sure that we should encourage your brother."

"He's different, now. I think it's her influence."

"But can she influence him enough?" she asked, a note of worry creeping into her voice.

"We'll have to wait and see."


	73. I'm fighting with fanfc to upload still

Kiley had hoped to catch up with Knives and Ace before they reached the ship. She hadn't thought that it would be too terribly hard, but she had forgotten her exhaustion in her optimism. Much as she tried, she could not press on much past sunset that first night, and the successive days took a greater toll on her than she had planned. She took to resting during the heat of the day and traveling longer into the nights, but try as she might, she was still too weak to push herself as much as she felt she ought.

She was more than slightly disappointed in what she viewed as her body's betrayal. It had never failed her so utterly before. She didn't want to take into account that she had already exceeded her personal limits, then rested for less than a day before deciding to run across nearly half a planet. She merely viewed her inability to press on as hard as she desired as a failure on her part, and as the days passed and she fell farther behind where she felt she ought to be she grew a little more depressed.

Worst was the night when she finally had to admit to herself that she wasn't going to catch up with them before they reached the ship. She didn't know what it was exactly, but the thought of that ship scared her, and acknowledging that she would need to return sapped much of the remaining enthusiasm she possessed. She lay huddled under her blanket, feeling very lost and alone. The sky above was very large, and still very alien, and she fought back tears as she faced the facts.

She would have to go back there. Resolutely, she tried to determine the root of her fear, so she could then argue herself out of it, but she could not find it. Other than not wanting Knives to feel comfortable…

That was it. Up until now, she had retained the upper hand, had been able to hold on to the illusion of being in charge, at least to some degree. But if she entered into his domain, she admitted that he held some power over her. That thought, that relinquishing of control, that was what frightened her most.

She was control; the ability to control situations to her advantage was one of the hallmarks of her character. The last time she had been out of control… Oh, those months were painful to remember. It was no wonder she was slightly phobic. 

And it wasn't as if she had any guarantee that Knives would treat her any better. He probably wouldn't harm her physically, and she could still fight him if he tried it, but her heart… oh, he could hurt her badly. Just admitting that brought her pain. He could hurt her badly, and that suggestion of future injury had her scared beyond reason. She knew he was cruel and could be capricious. She wasn't sure, no she knew that she couldn't trust him with her heart. 

But she was about to try it anyway. Courting pain, courting disaster, and she was willing. Just for that one last chance at happiness… just because she could not relinquish that one last ember of hope that things could work out. Maybe she was just fooling herself. But… maybe she wasn't. Maybe Meryl and Vash were right; maybe he did care. A little. Maybe it would be enough. And if it wasn't, what did she have to lose? 

With that comforting thought she fell asleep. She traveled hard through the next day, pushing herself until she dropped from exhaustion so she wouldn't have a chance to back out. The next morning, when she knew that she was close, she arose, shook what sand she could from her hair, dressed in the most respectable item of clothing her bag could produce, and slung her pack back over her shoulder.

The green of the dress seemed to change color as she walked, shadow and light creating a play of depth of color that linen should not possess. She wondered what facet of this planet created such shades, wondered if it was the linen or if it was the dye, but enjoyed it all the same. Armored against what would come as best as she could, her stride was confident and strong, masking the hesitation in her heart. She was sure that Knives had the approaches to his ship monitored, but could not be positive how far out his reach extended, so beyond what she felt was a proper outer perimeter she held a fixed, determined expression on her face, allowing none of her unease to show in either mien or bearing.

She reached the entrance and the doors were closed. Unsure of how to open them, and not willing to barge in uninvited, she sat down on the bridge and rummaged in her bag. Drawing out a length of string, she tied it into a loop and began to play cat's cradle. She ran through a few of the more complex variations of solitaire cat's cradle, then began one of the longer teaching sagas. Her fingers moved easily through the complex patterns, weaving through the twisted strands while moving from one step to the next. She grew so engrossed in the task that the opening of the doors came as a bit of a shock.

She looked up and caught Knives' expression as he looked down on her. Before he masked it, it was glee. He was glad to see her… Her hopes soared again. 

"You did show up." He sniffed. "I suppose you want to come in."

"Might," she said laconically.

"You do realize that you are not in control any longer," he added coldly.

She stood, unfolding her legs from beneath her and rising in one smooth motion. Her hands reached out and grabbed a hold of either side of his face. Startled, he flinched back, but she held firm. Her mouth pressed against his, firmly, insistently, as she released some of the tension she had carried with her in one melting kiss. She drew back as he began to respond, unwilling to relinquish that final bit of say in how things would happen.

"Might," she repeated, then bent over to pick up her bag. "Which room is mine?" she asked as she put the string away.


	74. But I can upload daily in yahoo

Strong arms encircled her waist, then lifted her into the air.

"Hey… What…" she protested as she was slung over one shoulder. She had managed to grab her bag and proceeded to beat on his back with it. "Let me go, you big oaf!" He walked back into the ship, and the slow closing of the door behind them sent a jolt of panic through her.

"I thought you would be a little slow to realize that I am the one in charge," he said conversationally, one hand resting on her rear as he tried to keep her on his shoulder. She wriggled more at this unauthorized liberty, finally dropping her bag and grabbing his other shoulder. Back creaking with the effort, she used the leverage to pull herself down his arm.

"What the--" squawked Knives as she slid to the floor. She tried to roll away but hit her bag before she could gain enough clearance to get to her feet. The impact of hitting the floor and then her bag jarred her, and his hands were on her again before she could catch her breath. She twisted, trying to keep him from getting a good grip, but he managed to grab her hand and shoulder before she could free her right arm from under her body.

"Dammit, Knives," she yelled, the sound echoing painfully in the small corridor. "Is this really what you want?"

He paused. "What?"

She finally freed her other arm. Glaring at him, shaking off his lax hold, she picked it up and held it across her body, then scooted away until her back rested against a wall. She sat there for a moment, breath hissing painfully through her teeth as she checked the arm. A quick glance at her knees and a niggling reminder of decency had her cross her ankles and smooth the dress so she wasn't flashing him.

He looked down at her while she fussed, silently staring, waiting for her to speak.

"I came here, didn't I?" she said finally, waving her left hand for emphasis. "Doesn't that imply something to you?"

"I win?" he said without thinking, then winced at her expression.

"It's not a battle, Knives. It's a relationship. There aren't winners and losers; it's supposed to be a partnership."

"Who says this is a relationship?" he asked coldly.

"Do you just want a slave?" she asked rhetorically. "If that's all you want, go kidnap some nubile young thing. I know you can find more attractive women if that's the only thing you're looking for."

He sighed, then leaned back against the other side of the corridor, arms folded, and glared at her.

"You are trying to make things complicated," he accused, then slid down the wall and sat much like she did.

"Things already are complicated. I'm just trying to define just what exactly those things are. Like, what exactly do you want from me?"

"More of those tricks of yours. Your help in exterminating the vermin." He blushed. "Bed things." He turned a bright shade of red.

She was polite enough to not laugh, even though she found that look entirely too cute for words. "Is that it?" she prompted.

His gaze traced the path of conduits on the ceiling. "No. I… want your help with Ace."

"Is that it?"

"What more do you need?"

"Lines, Knives. Lines to define this picture we're making."

"That's it," he growled, but wouldn't meet her eyes. "What do you want out of this?"

"Well… I want your help raising Ace. I want to be near you. I want to make like the fuzzy little bunnies. I want to hold you, and be held by you, to make you grow up, to help you lose the anger that eats at the inside of you. To have a place where I can leave the world behind. To feel safe. To save the planet. To figure out your favorite food and surprise you with breakfast in bed. To wake up some morning and not have to do anything at all. To know peace."

"Cake."

She looked up at him. "Huh?"

He picked at the knee of his jeans, then looked at her. "My favorite food is chocolate cake."

"Oh." She looked at him, surprised that he wasn't back in his ship suit. Actually, he was wearing the shirt that she had bought him, and that sight made her smile slightly, hopefully. "Did… you miss me? At all?" she asked tentatively.

He nodded, not meeting her eyes. "Ace missed you. We thought you would catch up to us before we got to the ship."

"I tried," she said. "I couldn't. I'm sorry."

"But you did come. I thought you might."

"Hoped?"

"Yeah. That, too."

She stood up, still cradling her arm. He started to rise, but she waved him back down. She sat by him and rested her head on his shoulder. He stiffened, then relaxed, his arm snaking over her shoulders and drawing her closer. She sighed and closed her eyes, breathing deep of that wonderful scent of him. 

"It's too bad that moments like these are only the punctuation after long times figuring out what they mean."

"Why do we have to figure out what it means?" he asked softly. "Why can't we just let what happens, happen?"

"Because I'm a girl. And I need to know these things."

He sighed. "Women are unnecessarily complicated."

"But soft and squishy in all the right places," she chirped.

He sighed. "I want you for more than being soft and squishy."

"I know. That's why things get complicated. If it makes you feel any better, all relationships are complex. It's not just us."

He stiffened. "Relationship?"

"Have a better word?"

"Thing?"

"Good and descriptive. We have a thing. Which differs from a relationship in what way?"

He relaxed a bit. "It's not as scary a word."

"So, not scary words describing a scary thought make the thought better?"

"I'm a guy," he explained. "We don't do the whole relationship thing."

"I see that." She sighed and drew closer to him. "But I think I want you anyway."


	75. Cuddles

"This feels good," she mused. 

"What? Sitting like this?"

"Well. Yes, that. But I was referring to this." She ran a hand over his arm, loving the feel of silk under her fingers and his muscles under her palm. 

"Oh."

"What?" She looked at him, wondering what that note in his voice portended.

"I just don't know how I'm supposed to respond to that."

"Most guys would say thank you."

"I say things like that and you hit me and call me conceited."

"Not this time I won't."

"Thank you." He said it tentatively, and she smiled, then buried her nose in the nape of his neck. Breathing deep of the scent of him, her smile widened.

"What are you doing?" he asked, moving forward a bit so her nose was no longer firmly planted on him.

"You smell very nice. I love the way you smell; I missed it." She quashed all thoughts of pheromones.

"I smell?" His voice was unsure.

She drew back and smiled at him. "Like feathers and warmth. Very nice things."

"Ah." He cocked his head to one side and looked at her, then buried his head in her hair. 

She ducked her head and grinned. "What? Turnabout is fair play?"

"Of course." His response was muffled by the top of her head, but still audible.

"So what do I smell like?"

"Hair."

She laughed.

"Hair, and green growing things. And sunshine."

"Oh." She grinned again. "Those are nice things."

He breathed deep again and sat back. "Very nice things."

She nestled her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She slipped into a bit of a doze, feeling safe and happy, and willing to just let herself feel and not try to understand the feelings.

Knives looked down at her, and he wondered just what about her made him feel so… happy. Holding her, being close to her… he never wanted to let her go. She was his, she had proved it by following him here. He wanted her in ways that he had never wanted anyone before, and that scared him a bit. Now, granted, he had never spent much time in female company, and that might be why he had never felt these sorts of things for the vermin before, but even so… 

She should not be in his heart. She didn't belong there. But there was no denying that she was there now, firmly ensconced. He couldn't dislodge her no matter how hard he tried. And how he had tried. 

Vermin. Burrowing everywhere, getting into everything, especially places they weren't wanted. Impossible to get rid of them completely; even when killed they left evidence of their presence behind. His hand reached up and stroked her neck. How easy it would be to snap it; how fragile she was when all was said and done. He could picture the light leaving her eyes, see death as it closed in on her. He could picture it in his mind, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It would break his heart to pieces when she finally left him; he would not hasten that day. 

He sighed and rested his cheek on her head. There was no use fighting this anymore. She had won, not him. He would win only when she and all her kind were dead. And she was slowly stealing the fight from him.

Damn her for that. And damn him for being to weak to stop it. Next thing you know, he'll be all weak and snively like his brother, crying at the drop of a hat, or the death of any of these pathetic humans. And what a disgusting thought that was.

His grip on Kiley's shoulder tightened. She made him weak. 

But he was miserable without her.

He sighed. What a dilemma. 

This last week had nearly driven him mad. He checked behind himself after nearly every step, sure that he would see her slowly gaining on them.

But she didn't. She never showed up. Every night, as he lay down to sleep, he was sure that he would wake to see her standing over him, that slightly superior grin dancing on her face as she watched him.

But each morning he awoke, only to be greeted by the suns and Ace. No smug expression of badly concealed glee, no sarcastic comment masquerading as witty. No Kiley.

Then, when he saw her coming on the ships sensors, the thrill that shot through his heart energized him. He waited in the control room long enough to be sure that it was her, then dashed down to the doors. He made her wait as long as he could stand, unwilling to let her know that he missed her. 

Then she had to go and be so infuriatingly calm, playing with string of all things. She looked perfectly willing to camp out there, as if the wait for the doors to open meant nothing to her. 

She must try to be aggravating. No one could be that maddening on accident. His left hand reached across his body of it's own accord and grabbed hers. The feel of flesh on flesh, palm on palm was so right, so wonderful that for a moment he forgot to breathe. The process came back to him, and he gasped slightly, breath hissing through his teeth. 

"What?" she asked sleepily. Her hand grasped his more tightly. 

"Nothing."

"Really?"

"Yes." 

"I don't need to move?"

"You don't get to move," he said sternly.

"Oh." She smiled. "Ok." She tried to return to resting, but the moment had passed. A minute went by as she resisted the pull of the inevitable, but she finally acquiesced. 

She sighed and made to sit up. Knives reluctantly let her, sighing as well. 

"Where's Ace?" she asked. "I'd like to say hello to her, too."

"That… won't be possible," Knives remarked hesitantly. 


	76. Alright!! Big chapter here!!

"This feels good," she mused. 

"What? Sitting like this?"

"Well. Yes, that. But I was referring to this." She ran a hand over his arm, loving the feel of silk under her fingers and his muscles under her palm. 

"Oh."

"What?" She looked at him, wondering what that note in his voice portended.

"I just don't know how I'm supposed to respond to that."

"Most guys would say thank you."

"I say things like that and you hit me and call me conceited."

"Not this time I won't."

"Thank you." He said it tentatively, and she smiled, then buried her nose in the nape of his neck. Breathing deep of the scent of him, her smile widened.

"What are you doing?" he asked, moving forward a bit so her nose was no longer firmly planted on him.

"You smell very nice. I love the way you smell; I missed it." She quashed all thoughts of pheromones.

"I smell?" His voice was unsure.

She drew back and smiled at him. "Like feathers and warmth. Very nice things."

"Ah." He cocked his head to one side and looked at her, then buried his head in her hair. 

She ducked her head and grinned. "What? Turnabout is fair play?"

"Of course." His response was muffled by the top of her head, but still audible.

"So what do I smell like?"

"Hair."

She laughed.

"Hair, and green growing things. And sunshine."

"Oh." She grinned again. "Those are nice things."

He breathed deep again and sat back. "Very nice things."

She nestled her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She slipped into a bit of a doze, feeling safe and happy, and willing to just let herself feel and not try to understand the feelings.

Knives looked down at her, and he wondered just what about her made him feel so… happy. Holding her, being close to her… he never wanted to let her go. She was his, she had proved it by following him here. He wanted her in ways that he had never wanted anyone before, and that scared him a bit. Now, granted, he had never spent much time in female company, and that might be why he had never felt these sorts of things for the vermin before, but even so… 

She should not be in his heart. She didn't belong there. But there was no denying that she was there now, firmly ensconced. He couldn't dislodge her no matter how hard he tried. And how he had tried. 

Vermin. Burrowing everywhere, getting into everything, especially places they weren't wanted. Impossible to get rid of them completely; even when killed they left evidence of their presence behind. His hand reached up and stroked her neck. How easy it would be to snap it; how fragile she was when all was said and done. He could picture the light leaving her eyes, see death as it closed in on her. He could picture it in his mind, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It would break his heart to pieces when she finally left him; he would not hasten that day. 

He sighed and rested his cheek on her head. There was no use fighting this anymore. She had won, not him. He would win only when she and all her kind were dead. And she was slowly stealing the fight from him.

Damn her for that. And damn him for being to weak to stop it. Next thing you know, he'll be all weak and snively like his brother, crying at the drop of a hat, or the death of any of these pathetic humans. And what a disgusting thought that was.

His grip on Kiley's shoulder tightened. She made him weak. 

But he was miserable without her.

He sighed. What a dilemma. 

This last week had nearly driven him mad. He checked behind himself after nearly every step, sure that he would see her slowly gaining on them.

But she didn't. She never showed up. Every night, as he lay down to sleep, he was sure that he would wake to see her standing over him, that slightly superior grin dancing on her face as she watched him.

But each morning he awoke, only to be greeted by the suns and Ace. No smug expression of badly concealed glee, no sarcastic comment masquerading as witty. No Kiley.

Then, when he saw her coming on the ships sensors, the thrill that shot through his heart energized him. He waited in the control room long enough to be sure that it was her, then dashed down to the doors. He made her wait as long as he could stand, unwilling to let her know that he missed her. 

Then she had to go and be so infuriatingly calm, playing with string of all things. She looked perfectly willing to camp out there, as if the wait for the doors to open meant nothing to her. 

She must try to be aggravating. No one could be that maddening on accident. His left hand reached across his body of it's own accord and grabbed hers. The feel of flesh on flesh, palm on palm was so right, so wonderful that for a moment he forgot to breathe. The process came back to him, and he gasped slightly, breath hissing through his teeth. 

"What?" she asked sleepily. Her hand grasped his more tightly. 

"Nothing."

"Really?"

"Yes." 

"I don't need to move?"

"You don't get to move," he said sternly.

"Oh." She smiled. "Ok." She tried to return to resting, but the moment had passed. A minute went by as she resisted the pull of the inevitable, but she finally acquiesced. 

She sighed and made to sit up. Knives reluctantly let her, sighing as well. 

"Where's Ace?" she asked. "I'd like to say hello to her, too."

"That… won't be possible," Knives remarked hesitantly. 

Kiley stiffened. "What did you do to her?" she asked, her voice dangerously soft and calm.

Knives stood and crossed his arms. "I didn't do anything to her. She was just so tired still, she wasn't bouncing back from that blast she did. I had to." He glared at her.

She glared back. That little explanation made absolutely no sense. "Had to do what, exactly?"

He shifted his gaze a fraction. "Put her in a bulb."

"You did WHAT?" she yelled, her voice breaking on the last word. "How could you do that? To her? My god, what were you thinking… I've got to get her out of there!" She spun on her heel and would have gone off to find her but Knives grabbed her arm.

"Where is she?" he asked calmly. She glared at him. "Do you know where she is?"

"In this ship," she forced out through a clenched jaw.

"I'll take you to her if you listen to me first."

"Fine. Speak." 

"When grievously hurt by Vash, I spent twenty years there, recovering. The environment is made to support plant life; it eases stress on the body and promotes healing. A human would die if they entered a bulb, but for us it's like re-entering the womb. It's not a bad thing; we're just hoping that some rest will help her regain her energy."

"It's not hurting her?"

"No. Definitely not."

"It's not sucking anything from her?"

"No. Not really, no."

She looked at him suspiciously. "Define not really."

"Well, anywhere that comfortable saps the desire to do anything else. Going into the bulb can be addictive, can make one withdraw from the real world and merely exist. It is calm and peaceful in there; much like the human ideal of heaven."

"So she… may not want to come out."

"She will come out again. I won't let her stay in there too long. A couple weeks, at most."

"Weeks?"

"She's healing. It's not an instant process. For most of us."

"It's not entirely instant for me, either."

"Whatever." He shrugged, dismissing the topic. "Now, do you want to go see her?"

She rolled her eyes. "Of course I do."

"Fine. Follow me." 

She grabbed her bag with her left arm and slung it over her shoulder, then hastened after Knives. 

She decided as she followed him that she would never have made it to Ace on her own. She didn't know who had designed this spaceship, but they made getting from one point to another difficult. Bulkheads blocked rational paths, corridors twisting on themselves with no rational pattern. She ended up glaring at the walls.

And saw the remains of welds and joins that suggested that Knives might have lent his hand towards a little remodeling. The mavens of better homes everywhere would not have agreed with his ideas, but they did…

Protect the plants. The entire maze was just another way that Knives protected the plants. She rolled her eyes at his back. Just on the off chance that some mob decided to storm the place with pitchforks, she guessed. Any army worth the name would have no trouble clearing these obstructions out of the way.

She grinned. His paranoia was so cute. Even misguided and pointless, he still tried to protect what was important to him.

And she… he left out in the desert. She sighed and stuck her tongue out at his back. If only he knew… But she didn't want to tell. She was going to make him accept her on her terms, or she would leave. It was that simple. Really. She had no other reasons for not telling him. Not like denial or anything. She was a firm believer in the truth. Lying was admitting that you were too weak to face reality. She wasn't too weak to face anything. She just didn't want to face Knives with the particular truth at the moment. 

She wasn't lying to him, not really.

She sighed again.

"Getting enough oxygen back there?" The sarcasm dripped.

"Yes." Flat tone, sarcasm deficient.

"Don't worry; we're almost there."

"Good. This ship is freaking huge."

"Do you need to take a rest?"

"No, no. Don't mind me; I'm just whining."

"If you say so."

"So."

"Hmm."

She grinned. "You never know quite what to make of me, do you?"

"Yes I do. I just mostly ignore you."

"Aw…"

"It works for me. Otherwise I think I would get entirely confused."

"Yes. You would. That's the point."

"You want to confuse me? Why?"

"Because it's fun. I like to keep people guessing. Makes life more interesting for me."

He paused, turned, and shot her a wry look. "The life you have led, you think you need to make it more interesting?"

She paused, thought, and smiled. "Life? No. People… Yes. Most of the time."

He sighed. "You are impossible."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"Maybe not when it left you lips, but by the time it reached my ears it had undergone the most miraculous transformation into something I liked to hear."

"You are so strange."

"I think I'm happy, Knives. It makes me do some of the most strange things."

"Happy? To be here?" His hands indicated the bare walls, the dim lighting. "This place is dismal."

"But my favorite people are here. I'm much more interested in what an environment contains."

"Favorite… people?" 

"Oh, does that scare you?"

"…no." He looked at her again, then grabbed her arm. 

Her breath hissed through her teeth as his grip sent a spike of pain up to her shoulder. 

"Oh. Sorry," he said, flushing a little. 

"It's ok. I'll heal. Then you can try that… whatever it might have been when I feel better, alright?" He nodded, then continued the trek through the corridors, but at a slightly slower pace. 

She grinned. "I hurt my arm. Not my legs."

He huffed a little, but said nothing she could make out. His stride did lengthen, but she couldn't tell if that was on purpose or not. She grinned a little, glad that they were finally reaching their destination. Or almost; it was a few more minutes of walking before Knives paused outside a large and impressive door. 

"I'm just going to guess," she started, cutting in before he could say anything. "Behind this door is a plant."

He shut his mouth and looked at her with a slightly exasperated expression. After a short pause, he remarked quietly, "Yes."

She nodded. "I just stole your speech moment didn't I?" she asked, chagrin tinting her tone. Faintly.

"Yes. You have a tendency towards doing that."

"You have a tendency to make long winded speeches. I think that makes us even."

He narrowed his eyes. "Do you want me to open this door or not?"

"Yessir. Sorry sir. I'll shut up now…" She did her best to look chastised.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Don't bother trying to act innocent. You fail miserably." But he turned and palmed open the door.

The room beyond was huge, huge and dimly lit, save for a bulb at the center of the chamber. A soft blue light permeated the room, picking up highlights in his eyes and hair, playing gently over his features. She slowly entered, her pack slipping off her shoulder to lie unheeded near the door. 

The contents of the bulb were mostly obscured by distance. Kiley took a few cautious steps towards the plant, and when Knives made no move to stop her she strode more confidently forward. 

She passed by banks of computer terminals, some blinking softly, monitoring things that she assumed were vital in some way, but at casual glance looked more like twinkling Christmas lights than warnings and cautions. She smiled at the thought, then shifted her gaze back to the edifice in the center of the room.

The bulb was huge, much larger than she was prepared for. She supposed that was a good thing, as it comprised the entire living space of a being, but she hadn't expected it so tower above her quite so far. The closer she drew, the more it filled her sphere of vision, until her eyes could not comprise the whole of it. She reached the platform at the base and slowly climbed the stairs, her courage all but failing her at the last moment. 

Finally, slowly, she reached the edge of the bulb. Her hands reached out to touch it, but heat radiated from the surface and she held them close instead, inches from the barrier between her and another world.

She peered in the depths, looking for Ace. Somewhere, somewhere… oh!

Over there, that must be her! She walked over to the left, one hand trailing as close to the bulb as she dared. A small shape drew nearer, and as she approached, she could make out more details.

The cute Ace she had known was gone. This small creature looked entirely different. Her skin looked like that which covered Knives' angel arm, her face looked entirely too composed, even in repose. She was covered in feathers, her small limbs edged with them, her torso sprouting them. She looked for features she could recognize and found none. Even so, her heart knew it was Ace, and she grinned.

"What?" asked Knives from behind her.

She jumped. "When did you get there?"

"About ten minutes ago."

"No way."

"Yes. You were a little… absorbed."

"She looks so cute."

"She's darling."

Kiley turned and looked at him. 

"What?"

"You said darling."

"So?"

"I never, ever, ever thought I would hear a word like that come out of your mouth."

He glared, then pointed. "Look. Here comes Shamra."

"Who? Oh, the plant!" She turned, and saw a larger version of Ace come floating her way. She paused and peered out, looking curiously at her and Knives. The reflection of her face was superimposed on the being before her. She grinned, but the grin sickened and died on her features as seconds passed. Suddenly, it was too much. Things were too much for her. Her mind put her in the bulb, saw her flesh changing, saw it transforming, sprouting, mutating on her. She was losing herself again, her identity slipping through her fingers, warping on her. She began to have trouble drawing air into her tortured lungs, began to see spots in front of her eyes, began to lose control. 

Oh, dear god in heaven and all the saints, buddhas, prophets and other assorted deities, she was losing herself. Tattered threads or her soul slipped through her fingers, unraveling skeins of her psyche twisting in the dark wind that surrounded her.

When she came back to herself, her gaze took in the corridor outside the plant room. A puddle of vomit congealed near her feet and she was covered in a cold sweat. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the wall, seeking some support. She swallowed hard, trying to erase the taste in her mouth and failing miserably.

That was her. That could be her. That wasn't her. 

She didn't know if she could handle this.

She sighed and lifted her head from the wall.

And saw a very angry Knives.

"What?" she croaked.

"You. You and all your talk of acceptance. And you run." Words were obviously failing him, but he was visibly upset, hands shaking, face flushed, eyes sparking. 

She swallowed and closed her eyes again, wondering what she could say. I'm sorry, it's ok for you to be a plant, and for other people to be weird shape changing powerful freaks but not me? Words to try to explain her feelings cluttered her throat, dying there, choking her, leaving her saying nothing. Her shoulders shook as she reacted to what she saw, how she pictured herself.

She just didn't know if she could handle this.

Knives watched her enter the room, slipped softly in behind her, careful to not distract her. She was entranced by what she saw, her gaze darting around the room quickly but centering on the bulb. He watched her steps slow, but not stop, as she took in the enormity of the bulb. He watched her reach out towards it, and could not help the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth as she drew back from the warmth. It was such a cold light that many assumed it possessed no heat, but it did. 

He walked up the stairs as she moved closer to Ace, stood behind her as she stared at the girl. He wanted to reach out, to place his hand on the nape of her neck, but feared to startle her. Instead he watched her, gauged her reaction. Curiosity, yes, and love, both were present.

But not fear.

She was not afraid. He had worried that seeing Ace in her plant form would scare her, would frighten her away, but it seemed that he had worried for nothing. He began to relax, then motioned for Shamra to come down.

And then there was the fear that he had so wished to not see.

Something about the grown plant frightened her badly, and for the life of him, he could not tell what it had been. She had merely swum down for a closer look, had only come nearer, and then Kiley was backing away. 

No, she wasn't backing away. She was running. He could smell the fear on her, watched her eyes as they stared unseeing into the bulb. She slowly moved away from the bulb, one cautious step after another until she bumped into the railing around the platform. Without even looking, she vaulted over it and fell the twelve feet to the floor. 

He heard her grunt as she landed, then saw her dart from the room.

And during all of this, he still hoped that she might come back.

Shamra was distressed, wondering what she had done that had frightened her so. He spent a few minutes reassuring her that it was nothing she had done, nothing to do with her at all. It was all Kiley's fault, all her inability to see the beauty that was before her. Slightly mollified, she drifted back into the recesses of the bulb, to think over what had occurred. 

Knives watched her go off to brood and sighed. His sigh threatened to turn into a scream of anger, but he bit down on it before he could frighten Shamra any more.

That bitch. He was so angry with her, with what distress her actions callously caused his sister… At least Ace had not been awake to see her friend flee from her in fear. She was saved that memory. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, but he forced himself to walk calmly from the room. It would not do for Shamra to see him leaving in anger. That would only distress her more. 

He exited and palmed the door shut, to place a barrier between the ugly scene he knew was coming and the innocents who did not need to see it. Then he turned and let his gaze take in the scene in the corridor. His eyes narrowed further at the sight.

Kiley had lost control of her stomach and sat curled in on herself, as close as one can get to the fetal position while still on their feet. She was drenched with sweat and quivering slightly, her body shaking in time with her pulse. Minutes passed, and he stifled the impulse to shake her. The way she was now, she would not even notice. It would be a waste of his time and his rage. 

He watched her come back to herself, watched her eyes regain a measure of sense. She closed them, and leaned her head against the wall, obviously seeking support. His lip curled. Weak. Weak and cowardly, like all humans. His rage rose again, and he began to shake with the effort of suppressing it. 

This time, when she opened her eyes, she saw him. He made no effort to hide how he felt, no attempt to soften the blow of his ire. 

"What?" she croaked.

"You. You and all your talk of acceptance. And you run." His throat closed on more words, but the ones he could utter pleased him. Each one hit her with the force of the blows he didn't want to rain upon her. She flinched from them all.

She stayed silent for a moment. For once her gaze was not shuttered from him, but showed him plainly the fear and pain she felt. The scent of her sickness rose between them, filling the air with an almost tangible presence of the emotion raging between them. 

"I thought I could handle this," she said weakly.

"You were obviously wrong."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't care." He threw the words at her, and was rewarded by seeing her flinch again. She closed her eyes again, seeking to escape.

He wouldn't let her. With one quick motion, he grabbed her chin and pushed her backwards, her head hitting the floor with a sick thud. "You are filth. You speak and prattle and pretend to be more than you are, but when it comes time to show your true colors, you turn into a coward and run. You ask why I hate you? Your scene in there hurt her feelings, and I care much more for her well-being than I do for yours. She is important. You will die in a matter of moments, as far as we are concerned. What happens to you falls apart into dust as your body rots, but what you did to her she will not forget and I will not forgive, not for the length of eternity."

Her eyes met his, or as much as she could focus on him. "I thought… I can't… There is… I…"

He stopped her lips with a finger. "I. Don't. Care."

She tried to close her eyes again and he shook her head roughly. 

"Stop trying to escape."

"Then stop glaring at me!" Her voice broke, cracking under stress.

He slammed her head on the floor again. Her eyes lost focus, then it snapped back again as she began to fight him.

"I seem to remember being in this position in this ship before," she said grimly as she forced an arm between their bodies.

"Going to run again?" he taunted. "You seem so good at it. Had much practice?"

She braced her right shoulder against the floor and pushed, gaining a few inches of space between them. Knives grabbed her wrist and squeezed, grinding the bones together. The pain drew a red curtain over her vision, but she used it to push harder. One final push, and she managed to force him off of her.

But his grip didn't ease. She was pulled from the floor, her weight suspended by her arm until the forces on it were too much. There was a snap, then a white hot wave of pain that grayed out her vision and made her gasp. Knives let go with a final twist, grinding the ends of the bones against each other. She fell onto her left side, curled around her arm, shaking with the pain. 

A foot took her neatly in the side, sending her sprawling. Her arms flew out for balance, and the right hit first the floor and then the wall. Breath was forced from her lungs, and she could not find the means to gather more.

Despite this, she stood, using the wall as support. She didn't try to use her eyes, the haze that pain curtained over them fogging the world. Instead, she listened carefully, focusing through the echoes, finding him… there.

He was coming towards her right side. She pivoted on her right and blocked the punch he threw her way with her left arm, then kicked out with her left leg, a roundhouse kick that took him in the side. Breath whistled out of him and he doubled over, hands automatically clutching his side.

She pushed herself along the wall a few feet then sat down hard. She closed her eyes and grabbed her right hand with her left, then pulled, a swift, sharp tug to force the bones back into alignment. Her head swam in the pain and threatened to drown her, but she fought through it. She was glad, though, that she had already emptied her stomach. 

She wrapped her arm tightly with a band of force, holding the bones in place until she had a chance to truly heal them. Fighting the waves of pain, she opened her eyes and flinched.

Knives was peering closely into her face, his angry blue eyes inches from hers.

"We have anger management problems," she said, in as close to a conversational tone as she could manage.

"Maybe you shouldn't make me mad, then," he said softly.

His hands came down on either side of her, trapping her. They moved to her hips, almost seemingly of their own accord. His eyes didn't leave hers as they slid up to her waist, grabbing the slack in her dress and pulling it tight to the floor.

Then, with one swift motion, he ripped the skirt off, tearing from the seam at the waist, pulling the fabric from beneath her and balling it up. His left grabbed hers, and his right forced the wad into her hand.

"Clean up your mess," he said coldly, then got up and walked back into the plant room.

She watched him go, barely comprehending what he had asked, but managing to make it to shaky knees and crawl over to the puddle of vomit. She cleaned up as best she could, then sat back against the far wall. Her head rested against the cool metal, her eyes closed as she forced what healing she could on her arm. The pain slowly receded, and she slowly made and relaxed a fist. 

Good enough.

The remains of the dress were set beside her, and she closed her eyes, suddenly tired as her body crashed from the adrenaline high.

Oh, how she had made a mess of things. Knives was right; she was a coward. But he just didn't understand… she was afraid of herself. She was afraid that she was losing herself, that in being something other than human she stopped being who she was and instead became… oh, she didn't know what. And it wasn't like she was proud of who she was, like the person that she had been was anyone to try to remain. But it was familiar, and known, and if she had felt lost on this planet before, she didn't know what words to place on this feeling now. 

She was scared, so very scared. She ached for someone to hold her, and tell her that things would be alright. But… that would be a lie. Her problems lay inside her, and no one could help her with them. She needed to deal with them on her own, needed to find out who she was now, if she wasn't who she thought she was.

Or maybe she was who she thought she was and nothing else had changed. Or mattered. Or maybe not.

She shook her head, trying to clear out the thoughts as they spiraled downward into a morass of confusion. Feeling a draft, she pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The feel of flesh on flesh steadied her a bit. 

Whatever else she was, she was real. She was here. She would manage whatever came her way. 

As her resolve firmed, Knives exited the plant room, carrying her bag.

"Get up."

She stood easily and ignored his gaze as he took in her body. She had suffered through more lecherous gazes when she had lived in the barracks. No one was more crass than a group of soldiers.

"You are a skinny twit, aren't you?" he mused.

Ok. So it didn't take crass to make her blush.

"Can I have my clothes?" she asked.

He thrust her bag at her, but before she could draw out a pair of pants he was moving off down the hall. She glared at his retreating back, but shouldered her pack and grabbed the remains of her skirt before following.

He led her again on a torturously twisted route through the ship. They followed the route that Knives had led her on to reach to plants for only a few floors before his new path diverged. Kiley noted the twisting and turnings, imprinting them on her memory as a means of avoiding having to think.

Of course, thoughts assaulted her anyway.

Had she done the right thing, in coming here? She had avoided dwelling on the question as she traveled over the sands, but she could ignore it no longer. Saying that she was here, and saying that she would have to just deal with the results of her arrival were only means of denying an answer that had meaning.

Should she have come here? Her heart told her that she could not have gone anywhere else, but she was old enough to know that the heart is not the most important factor to consider when making a decision. She padded softly after Knives and wondered what she brought with her, wondered if her presence was worth the disruption she had already caused.

She brought companionship, but he would get that from Ace. He hadn't seemed to miss it much, anyway, seemed to be doing alright before she burst in on him. So if she left, it wasn't like he would be alone.

She brought knowledge, but she could write that down, could make it accessible to him without any need for her to be near. He knew the basics now, and could learn the rest without linking. That was how she had learned, anyway. It was possible. Easy enough, if you were smart and dedicated. He would do just fine.

She brought a lot of other things, too, strife and disharmony and discord. Fear, and distrust, self-loathing and violence. Maybe coming here had been a bad idea.

She was shaken out of her reverie when she almost ran into Knives. He had stopped outside a room and palmed open the door. She stopped abruptly and looked up in time to catch the sneer that rippled over his lips. She let a frown linger on hers.

"Going to lock me in this one, too?" she asked unkindly.

"No. You are free to roam about. Any rooms you aren't allowed in won't let you in."

"Thrilling."

"It wasn't meant to be."

"Goody for sarcasm, then."

She turned to look in. The room was dismal and gray, the lighting dim, the space cramped. The bed looked hard, the bathroom tiny, and the closet space non-existent.

"Homey," she commented, walking in.

"Glad you approve." He moved in behind her, and the small space seemed abruptly tiny. 

She dropped her pack on the floor by the bed and pulled out her blanket, smoothing it over the bed. The colors brightened up the room a tad, but it still seemed entirely too small.

"Do you mind? I want to get dressed," she snapped.

"I do mind," he said. "I don't want to leave right now." He sat down on the bed, one leg tucked beneath him, hands draped around the other knee as he leaned back against the wall.

"Well, it's my room."

"It's my ship."

"But you gave me the room."

"I can take it back and make you sleep in the hall. You should try to get over these silly notions of privacy; it's not like you had any back at the oasis."

"Fine." She grabbed her bag.

"Where are you going?" he demanded, leaning forward and catching her by one arm before she could leave. 

"The bloody hall."

"Why?"

"Because it was an option."

"Then I take it back. I want you here."

She shook her arm from his grasp. "I want you somewhere other than here."

"Too bad."

"Do you think I gave up all my rights when I came here? I can always leave."

"Try it and I'll bring you back. You're mine."

"Like a dog? A toy? What happens when you get tired of me? Going to let me go then?"

"No. You are a danger to my plans."

"So I'm a prisoner now?" Her eyes narrowed as she looked around. "I've been in larger cells."

"You aren't imprisoned here."

"But I can't leave."

"No."

"Knives, is this your first language? Because I think you're having some trouble grasping a basic concept here."

"It's only a prison if you want to leave," he said, leaning back again.

"So what's going to make me want to stay? You? Ace?"

"That's why you came in the first place, isn't it?" he asked with a grin. "Me? Ace?"

"I love you guys, but that doesn't mean I feel like staying here until I die."

"You what?" He looked at her intently.

"Might want to leave sometime?"

"Before that. Say it again." 

"Love you guys? Oh, platonically." Her eyes shifted to the floor.

"What we have between us is not platonic," he pointed out.

"And what is it that we have, exactly? Cuddling interspersed with bouts of violence?"

He looked at his hands. "We could… Could…"

"Avoid each other except for designated cuddling times?"

He looked up. "That might work," he started, in agreement until he caught a glance of her face.

"That's not a relationship. That's just sex. And if that's all you want, there are plenty of people who are going to be better at it than me." She sat down next to him on the bed, but kept her distance. 

"But I want you."

"You can't have it both ways. Either it's just fuzzy bunnies or it's something more. And it's not going to be something more if we can't figure out how to spend more than a week together without beating the crap out of each other."

"We've gone longer than a week."

"Barely."

He turned to her. "I have a theory."

"What is that?"

"All the violence is just suppressed sexual tension between us." 

Her eyes widened, but he was already reaching out towards her.

Kiley put her hands out in front of her chest. Knives bumped into them and reached around for her shoulders.

"Whoa, there, Knives. Are you forgetting something?"

"I forget nothing. I'm just tired of waiting."

"Tough," she said, and struggled in his grasp. "We aren't doing this."

He scooted closer to her on the bed. "You know you want to."

"I don't want to like this."

"That's too bad for you. This is how it's going to happen."

"No, Knives."

He grabbed her chin and dropped a quick kiss on her forehead. "Stop me. I want to feel you struggle." His hand dropped back to her shoulder, then slid down her arm, stopping with a tight grip at her elbow.

She moved back, placing her back against the wall for leverage. "I thought you were mad at me."

"I am. I'm tired of you pretending to be something other than the vermin you are."

"And you still want to screw me? I thought you despised vermin."

"Who says I don't despise you?"

She pushed at him, but couldn't loosen his grip on her arms. "Then why?"

"Because I want to." 

"You are one messed-up, sick, psycho bastard." She tried to throw herself on the floor, but he trapped her legs under his body. He straddled her to stop any similar actions.

"Enough sweet words. You act like you are any different from me."

"I try to be." She quit struggling, realizing that her efforts weren't getting her anywhere.

"And it gets you nowhere. The freshest blood lies on your hands. You greet every situation with violence. Given a chance, you cause harm to others to get your way. Your power lies in your potential to commit acts of violence. All your attempts garner you is a heavy heart."

"At least I care."

"Oh, and how thrilled your victims are to hear that. I'm sure their ghosts are comforted by your remorse."

"Stop it."

"What, no witty comeback?"

"Stop it, Knives. I know I have problems, I know I screw up all the time."

"I'm going to screw you up." His hand slid under the remains of her dress.

"Don't be so crass. I'm trying to do better."

"And failing miserably. Emphasis on the miserable."

She pushed his hand away. "Why this?" 

"Because I want to."

"Why me?"

"Because you're here."

"Why now?"

"Why not? Now shut up."

She subsided, accepting the inevitable. At this point, the only way she knew how to stop him was to kill him, and what was to come wasn't so bad as to deserve that. His hands on her were heavy, his body trapping her on the bed. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine that things were going the way that she had dreamed they might, that his hands were gentle instead of cruel, that they were sharing, rather than he was just taking.

That it was love, rather than just sex. 

She tried to help him along, but he forced her hands away. All he wanted was for her to lay there and accept what happened to her. 

So she did.

And when he was done, he rolled off her, collected his clothes, and left. The door opened and closed for him almost soundlessly, and she sat there, unmoving, until she was absolutely certain that he was gone. After a while, she opened her eyes again and sat up. Her body was sore in unaccustomed places, and she slowly inched off the bed and into the bathroom. She cleaned herself up, noting where she was bruised and where she wasn't with eyes devoid of tears.

It was just sex. She could handle it. She had before. Sex meant nothing, which was really the only horror of it. Something that personal should mean something more. Something more than just satisfying an itch, or trying to possess someone, or whatever Knives' reason had been. She didn't know and couldn't bring herself to care.

She reached out the door and pulled her toothbrush out of her bag and tried to clean the taste of vomit out of her mouth. And if she brushed her teeth a few minutes longer than she normally did, her excuse was that the taste in her mouth lingered and lingered and lingered.

*******************************************************************************

Knives walked grimly through the ship, his eyes fixed resolutely before him, his mind thinking only of the walk, and not of what had just transpired. It was a relatively short trip to his room, but it seemed to take forever. 

He entered his room and threw himself down on his bed. His body was tired, but his mind raced. 

He had taken her. 

Finally, he had had her.

She had taunted him and teased him, bothered him, annoyed him, and finally he had his revenge.

A tear slipped from his eye. He wiped at it with a finger and looked at the smear of moisture. It seemed out of place. Why would he be crying?

Another tear fell, and then another, and then more. He couldn't stop them, couldn't hold them back. His shoulders shook as he cried, his head buried in his arms to muffle the sobs. 

This wasn't what he had wanted at all. 

He had wanted something that he couldn't walk away from when it was over. He had wanted a chance to examine every inch of her, to hold her and caress her and love her. 

He wanted to share something with her, but he took from her instead. 

It was his first time, and it was nothing like what he had imagined. It was so much less, and his heart broke on the difference between his dreams and reality. There was no meeting of hearts, only of bodies, and he knew that he had not even done well with that part. She had just lain there, unmoving as he took from her what he thought he wanted. Everything had gone so wrong.

And the worst part was he knew that he had only himself to blame.

*******************************************************************************

One of the worst parts about bad days is that curling into a ball and hiding your head does not make your troubles go away. As soon as you pull yourself together enough to face the world again, there they are, still staring you in the face. This might be why many people who fall into a pit of despair find it so hard to crawl back out again. Why bother facing the world when your troubles will be the first things to greet you? Better to avoid life altogether than face something you'd rather avoid.

Kiley didn't have that luxury.

Her room had no food.

So, after enough time passed for her to feel slightly lightheaded, she uncurled herself from around her pillow, combed her fingers through her hair, and resolutely faced the door.

Then found herself cuddled around her pillow again.

She didn't want to leave her room. 

Her stomach rumbled.

She couldn't stay.

She sighed, checked to make sure that every inch of skin was covered with some form of clothing, knotted the laces of her boots to make them nearly impossible to get off, and faced the door again. 

Her hand shook a little as she reached for the lock pad, but her palm print did key the door open. She clenched the hand into a fist and let it fall to her side. Her gaze took in the hallway outside, but she saw nothing to stop her from exiting. A cautious look to either side of the door let her know that the hall was empty. She shot one last look at her bed, but suddenly was seized with revulsion. She didn't want to stay in this room a second longer.

She stepped out resolutely. The door swooshed shut behind her, nearly soundless, but the sudden movement startled her. She paused and made sure she could open the door from this side as well, then turned to the right and walked down the corridor. After she ascertained that Knives was to her left, that is.

She started out checking every door she passed, looking for food, but after a long succession of rooms much like her own, she decided that a kitchen would be larger, the doors spaced differently. And, as she decided as she reached the end of the corridor, not in this hallway.

She turned to the right again, for no other reason then it got her farther away from Knives again. She started trying doors again, and not all of these opened for her. Those that did appeared to be offices, and any food that might have been stashed in those desks was far too old for her to eat.

Even Twinkies.

At the end of this hallway, she turned left. After about a quarter mile of walking, she found something rather interesting behind one of the closed doors.

A huge gymnasium stretched before her, recesses lost in the dimness of the emergency lights. She flicked on the lights, and as they slowly powered up she peered about, noting what was present.

There… rows of exercise equipment. There, high-low bars and other gymnastic equipment. There… strength training machines. Over to the left, and back a ways… a large open space with a padded floor. She couldn't tell if it was meant for martial arts or aerobics. Either way, it looked inviting. Her gaze flicked over the room, but her body was drawn to the horse. Someone, at some time, had left a bag of chalk by the base, and she dusted her hands before grabbing on and beginning to play. 

She spun about and let her body move, let motion overtake thought, let exercise erase memory. She shifted about the equipment, easing her body back into the motions she had almost forgotten. It had been so long, since her last time in a gym, her last time playing on real equipment. This was nearly heaven.

As her breath began to rasp in her throat she desisted. She spared a moment and a frown over the state of her conditioning. That had been merely a little over half an hour of rather light fun, and here she was, tired. Pathetic.

Oh well. She had started out tired and hungry. That might have contributed. Her stomach grumbled as she walked over and got a drink of water from one of the fountains ringing the walls. After easing her thirst, she looked over at the strength conditioning equipment. What she wanted was normally placed near there… ah.

She found some tape in a cupboard near the punching bag and wrapped her knuckles. She stood back and looked at the bag, made sure that there was no visible wear, that it hung well, that nothing was likely to break if she went all out.

She started out with a few light jabs, gauging the hardness of the bag, then started to work on it. Left, right, left, right. High left, low right, switch. Repeat. Kick. She carefully placed her punches over the bag, aiming for accuracy and speed. She worked her speed up, letting her fists fly as fast as her body could push them through the air. Her body began to sway with the rhythm as she fell into a pattern that she could execute at near her top speed. It was designed to topple a man in the fewest number of blows, and she once could perform the task three times in a second. Try as she might, she could not get below two and a half now.

She stopped and sat heavily on the floor, panting. Failure. Out of shape. Her thoughts taunted her as she panted, one insult for each breath. She glared at the bag, letting it take the heat of her disappointment in her poor performance. It slowly swung, motion dwindling to a stop before her breathing eased.

"Thinking of anyone in particular?" came the slightly mournful voice from behind her. Her shoulders tightened, and she wondered just how long he had been back there.

"No," she said shortly.

"Oh. You know, I sometimes forget just how dangerous you can actually be."

"I noticed."

"That was… pretty good. Fast."

"I've done better."

"To people?"

"Yes. Not much point in just taking out a punching bag, now is there?" she asked, slightly pissy.

"Guess not."

She stood up slowly, resting halfway up, her arms on her knees. Knives stayed back, and she wasn't sure whether she preferred that or not. With a final push, she made it perpendicular to the floor. She swayed slightly from foot to foot as her head swam.

"I'm hungry," she said, more as a notation of being than a query for food.

"Would you like me to show you to one of the kitchens?" he asked quickly.

"Please." 

He turned and walked away at a brisk pace. Kiley forced herself to follow, lifting each foot carefully so she wouldn't stumble. Even so, as soon as they entered the hallway she began walking by the wall. It's presence by her side comforted her, supported her. She realized that she was running a hand along it, just in case, and forced the traitorous appendage to lie by her side.

She was concentrating so much on the simple mechanics of movement that she didn't pay much attention to the route they took. In fact, she almost passed by Knives as he entered a room. The sudden lack of him before her drew her up short, and a quick glance to the right later she noted an open door. She left her wall and carefully walked across the hallway, entering the room and sitting down hard at a table.

She buried her head in her arms and fought passing out. Her head swam, and she began to hallucinate the glorious scents of food.

A quick look at the table before her reassured her. There was food there; it wasn't just a vision. She stared at it dumbly for a moment before digging in.

The first thing she downed was some sickly sweet drink. The taste of it as it hit her mouth was pure heaven, and she swallowed as fast as she possibly could. As she felt the affects of the drink hit her bloodstream, she dug into the pasta dish before her. It was spaghetti, much like what she had ordered in December, but a much larger serving. She attacked the plate, barely pausing in her intake to chew. There were some assorted cooked vegetables over to one side which alternated every few bites with the pasta, and meatballs she shoved in her mouth two at a time. These last she mostly ignored until near the end as they took longer to chew. 

When she ran out of large pieces of food to shove in her mouth, she grabbed the bread off the edge of the plate and mopped up every last bit of sauce. Then she looked mournfully at the empty plate and sighed.

A hand came and took it away, leaving a fresh one in it's place. 

"Thank you," she said automatically, then collected herself enough to look around. Knives was leaving the room, the empty dish in his hand. She sighed, but ate off this plate a little more slowly, watching the door he had left through.

He came back a few minutes later with another plate of food in one hand and a dessert in the other. She watched him impassively as he walked behind her and set the plate of food on her left, and the dessert on her right. She stared at her plate as she chewed, trying to ignore him as he stood behind her.

His hands came down and rested lightly on her shoulders.

She couldn't help herself; she flinched. He drew them back quickly, like she had burned him. He sighed and walked to her right, then around the table to sit across from her. He steepled his hands together, then rested his chin on his hands and stared at her as she ate.

"Aren't you hungry?" she asked, pausing long enough in her meal to force the words out.

"No."

"It's not like I'm the only one who got some exercise today," she said coldly, putting her fork down.

The barb sank home; he flinched.

Shifting slightly in his chair, he sat back and wouldn't meet her eyes.

She dug into her food again.

Silence reigned in the room. Kiley tried to ignore Knives' presence, and Knives didn't know what he was supposed to say, so stayed silent.

Kiley made it about halfway through her dessert before her appetite failed her. She began to play with what was left, squishing cake crumbs between the tines of her fork, carefully involved with the task so she wouldn't have to look up. Finally, she sighed and set the fork down.

Looking up at him, she sat back in her seat and just stared. He grew more uncomfortable by the second, which was her aim. Guilty consciences were always her allies.

"What?" he asked, finally.

"Nothing."

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

"Thank you for dinner."

He stared at her, nonplussed for a moment. "That wasn't what I meant."

"Tell me what you meant. Don't make me guess," she said coldly.

"I…" He fought for words, but none came out.

"You. Amazingly erudite, Knives."

He glared, but it held no heat. "This wasn't what I wanted."

"What wasn't, Knives? Let's not dance around the subject."

"The sex!" he exploded. "What did you think I was talking about."

"Oh, that," she said flatly. She pushed the dessert plate out of her way and splayed her hands on the table, looking at her fingers for a moment before meeting his eyes again. "I don't see what's bothering you about that." He stared at her, saying nothing as she paused. After a moment, she continued. "I figured that you decided that I had been raped enough times for once more to not really matter."

He quickly sat up straight, head coming up in a sharp motion, cheeks flushing at the remark. Unfortunately, he had been on the back edge of his seat, and the precipitous motion sent it toppling. He leaned over and picked it up, blushing furiously. Kiley just stared at her hand on the table, absorbed in the contrast of flesh on plastic as a means to ignore the world.

"I didn't rape you," he started. "It was… not rape."

"I said no, Knives."

He stammered for a bit, then managed, "You didn't stop me."

She looked up at him, very serious. "I was an assassin, Knives. I don't know many ways of stopping someone that don't involve grievous bodily injury or death."

"Oh. Um."

"Yeah. So I could either kill you or just… lay there."

"Oh."

"So what was your problem with it? I mean, you made damn sure you were the one in control."

He looked down at his hands. "Um."

"Oh, come on Knives. No reason to be shy now."

"I… it… I…" he stammered. "It didn't feel right," he said finally, lamely.

She laughed dryly. "That's encouraging to hear."

He glanced at her quickly, then back at his hands. "…Why?"

"I'd have worried a bit more about letting you near Ace if you though that was a fun time."

His head shot up and he glared at her. "I would never hurt her!"

"But it's all right to hurt me?" she asked, slightly morose. 

His eyes narrowed as he assessed her. "You don't seem all that angry."

She sighed, and looked past his shoulder, fixing it on a random spot on the wall. "I'm not angry. I'm just sad." She paused for a moment, looking for words. "I think I have been raped too often. As far as unwanted sex goes, that wasn't the worst I've ever had. I wasn't bleeding at the end; that's always a plus. It… things like that make it very hard for me to care, about anything anymore."

She sighed again. "It's a bit sad. You may be crazy and genocidal, but there is something about you that tries very hard to be honorable. I like that about you. But then there's that part of you that has been so cruel for so long that it overwhelms anything that the honorable side of you tries to accomplish."

She pushed away from the table, standing up. She forced a smile and, with false cheerfulness, said, "Just another scar on my soul. It's ok. You can get used to any sort of pain, I guess." She turned and walked to the door. She paused in the frame for a moment, but Knives stayed silent. 

She moved on.

******************************************************************************

Knives buried his face in his hands, elbows resting on the table. The half eaten dish of chocolate cake sat directly before him. He stared at it as if it could give him the answers he was looking for.

He hadn't even thought. Not about what he was doing to her. Not about what he was doing to her… again. His mind brought up some of the memories she had shared with him, memories of her childhood, memories of her treatment at the hands of her stepfather. Where sex was just a means of exercising power over her.

A lot like what he had just done. He moaned softly and ran his fingers through his hair, looking for an answer that would make things better, that would make what he had done less… evil. This wasn't what he had wanted.

He had wanted to hold her, much like that night at the oasis. He had wanted a chance to explore her, and learn all about her. He had wanted to share.

But he had been angry and upset and had stolen what he hadn't even needed to. She had been trying to… She had made overtures towards sharing, and he had pushed them away. He had taken what he had wanted in an effort to control her, and he just ended up hurting himself.

And her, too, of course.

He stretched his arms across the table and rested his forehead on the cool surface. Abruptly, he sat up and looked at the plates. They seemed to accuse him, but that may have just been his conscience. He stood and carried them into the kitchen, tossing them into the cleaner, throwing them away as if that could in some way erase what he had done, before leaving the kitchen to go to his room. He had planned on visiting Shamra this afternoon, but she would know that there was something wrong with him, and this was most definitely not something he wanted to try to explain to her. 

He threw himself down on the bed again, mind reeling. He hadn't thought, hadn't known. He had just wanted, and been angry, and she was there, already mostly undressed. The time had seemed right, he had thought that he was in control of the situation, finally. She had been so frustrating, with her insistence on being treated like an equal, and he had just thought that he was finally putting her in her place, but it looked like he had broken things between them completely.

He looked around his room. Strange how it had never felt so empty before, so plain. The shirt he was wearing was about the only splash of color. He had never noticed the lack before, and wondered what else she had changed about him without him noticing. With a thought, he made a few hundred tiny pinpricks of light in all the colors of the rainbow and placed them on the ceiling. The room brightened considerably, but he wasn't cheered.

He laced his fingers together and placed them behind his head while he stared thoughtlessly at the ceiling.

He had seriously messed things up. And he had no idea how to make them better.

He sat up abruptly. But maybe he did know where to start…

*******************************************************************************

A soft chime sounded, sounding strange in the room. The noise seemed to be eaten by the walls, sounding then falling flat. Kiley cocked her head to one side and tried to place the noise. It chimed out again and something clicked. 

Doorbell.

She set down the shirt she was holding on the back of the room's chair, then went and opened the door. She was both surprised and unsurprised to see Knives there. Surprised, because she hadn't expected to see him for awhile. Unsurprised, because who else was there in the ship to be at her door?

"I'm sorry," he said abruptly, speaking before she could potentially say anything.

She wasn't sure what to say to that abrupt apology, so she fell back on the old standard of prevarication.

"Hmm?"

"I said I was sorry," he repeated, with a slight edge of asperity.

"For what?"

He looked at her. "For what I did earlier, of course."

"And just what exactly was that?"

He looked torn between wanting to be mad at her for making this difficult and being ashamed. Finally, he settled for looking at the floor and mumbling out, "I'm sorry that I," pause, "raped you."

She waited a moment, mind searching for a response. Finally her mouth opened and out popped a word. "Good."

He looked at her again, slightly shocked. "Good?"

"I guess."

"That's all you have to say?"

"At the moment."

"Oh." The lost look on his face demanded that she explain her answer in a way that his anger never managed.

"Knives… what you did to me wasn't the most horrible thing that has happened to me in my life. Sadly, it doesn't even come close. One of the fun problems about being strong, and female, is that there are many men who want to prove their worth by dominating me. While what you did was wrong, and horrible, what I'm having problems with right now is dealing with the memories it sparked. Your actions uncovered a dark pit of horrible, hated memories and let them come bubbling out. What I'm trying to do right now is force them back into their dark little hole."

"Oh." He looked at the floor again.

"Yeah. So don't take me too personally at the moment. I'm just trying to stay sane." She stepped back from the door and reached out to palm it shut. 

"Wait!"

She paused, hand over the pad. "Yes?"

"Would… talking… help?"

"Not really. Some things you just don't want to share." She hit the switch.

Then she went and sat on the bed, grabbing the blanket and throwing it over her, holding her knees to her chest. Her shoulders shook with the force of the memories that assaulted her, memories of her childhood intermingled with more recent memories of her treatment at the hands of her enemies.

Oh, oh, oh… it had hurt so much. It hurt so much. Her gaze fixed on the wall, but her mind saw visions much more terrible. Hands grabbing her, hitting her, holding her down no matter how hard she fought… It was so much easier to just lie there passively and wait for it to be over, to just hope that maybe this time it wouldn't hurt as much as she feared. And being wrong so many times…

She just sat there and shook, reliving each memory before she could force it away. Her fingers clenched the edge of the blanket so tightly they crimped the cloth, knuckles white, bone standing out in stark relief.

She took some comfort in knowing that the people that had done that to her were very far away, and that they could never touch her again. It was a cold comfort, and not much of one. If she closed her eyes she could still imagine them in the room here with her, hands pinching, bruising, fists pummeling, mouths biting, hurting, stealing… pain.

Ah, the pain. Nothing like a high pain tolerance to make people want to see just how long it takes to make you scream.

She rested her forehead on her knees and just let herself shake, let the shudders echo through her body. She forced the pain away as best she could, then swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. There was only one way to finish off this process. Keeping the blanket snug around her shoulders, she exited the room and went back to the gym. She bypassed the gymnastic equipment and punching bag for something much more primal. The strength training machines. She shrugged out of her blanket and folded it neatly, setting it near her on a bench, then grabbed a bottle of water and set to work.

There is nothing like making every muscle in your body ache from exhaustion to remind one of the here and now, and divorce you from the memories of then and there. She started out working her legs, adding more weight every twenty reps until her joints screamed for mercy. Then she went and worked on her shoulders and her arms until her hands shook so much she could no longer hold the pin steady enough to move it.

She rubbed a bleary hand over her eyes and contemplated making it back to her room. That notion was discarded as unworkable; her legs would not hold out that long. Besides… she really didn't want to sleep there tonight. She finished up the last of her water and wondered if she should go get more. Memories of waking up dehydrated decided her, and she staggered over to a fountain and drank as much as she could hold. 

Splashing her face and arms, she tried to scrape off the worst of the sweat, but a full shower was beyond her. She filled the bottle and took it back to her blanket with her, so she would have something nearby when she awoke later in the night. Despite her exhaustion, she knew she would.

Days like these always led to bad nights.


	77. Night pains

Knives sat next to the monitor and watched Kiley work herself into exhaustion. The cameras in the gym were not angled right for him to get a good view of what she was doing, but did give him an idea of where she was. It would not do to let a human, any human, go wandering around his ship unsupervised.

Her little trip earlier had worried him. He had set the ship to watch over her, and to warn him when she left her room. When she automatically turned in the direction opposite of the one he was in, his suspicions rose. He had watched as she opened doors, watched as she wandered in and out of mostly empty rooms, watched as she was obviously looking for something.

And had groaned as he realized she was hungry. She was walking farther and farther from the kitchen, but there was no way she could have known that. He sat and observed her progress, waiting until she settled down in one spot to catch up with her, and show her to the food. It wouldn't do to leave too early and lose track of her.

He almost grinned when he watched her enter the gym the first time. Her mien as she took in the room was comical in its enjoyment. Then he had watched her work out, and was enthralled by the grace she showed. She didn't even seem to be working hard, merely flying because she enjoyed it, touching hand or foot to earth or bar because it pleased her to do so, not because gravity dictated that she must. 

Then she stopped, and moved over to the punching bag. At that point he left his room and went to the gym to watch more personally. She was incredibly fast, and very precise in her blows. One had to respect that level of skill, no matter who possessed it.

He shook his head, returning to the present. She appeared to have bedded down for the night. He set the computer to warn him if she began moving about the ship again. He turned down the contrast on the monitor and readied himself for sleep as well. Slipping beneath the covers of his bed, he turned off the light and tried to rest.

A bloodcurdling scream cut his attempt short. He fell out of bed and stumbled over to the monitor, stubbing his toe on the chair in the process. The screams had chocked off into a series of hoarse sobs by the time he got it turned back on. His gaze took in a shaking woman and no real threat. He watched as she sat up and went back over to the strength training machines. She worked on them awhile longer before she sought her blanket, again shaking with exhaustion.

He repeated his prior actions, shaking his head a little as he re-sought his bed. 

And was reawoken by another scream.

He reached the monitor, stubbing his toe again in the process. Again she sought to work herself into exhaustion, and he cursed under his breath as he realized that she was suffering through nightmares. 

His hands grabbed the edge of the desk as he forced himself to stay where he was, to not go and try to give comfort. He was likely the last person she would wish to see. Instead he watched as she worked herself so hard that tears of pain rolled down her cheeks, as she tried to work off the adrenaline rush that kept her awake. As she tried to force her body to rest without dreams, and failed, again and again. 

He watched, feeling it his penance to see what his damage his actions caused. Hours passed where he got no sleep and she received only a little, managing perhaps twenty minutes before her mind forced her body awake to repeat the cycle. He wondered at the torment she must be going through, for sleep to be such a place of pain for her.

And it was his fault. Maybe all the pain was not his fault, but this torment that he watched was all his doing. No wonder she had not forgiven him, not with pain this raw lurking so close to the surface of her mind. It was a wonder that she was even civil to him.

He ached as he held himself there, wanting so badly to make this cycle end, to stop the pain that she so obviously felt, to banish her fears, to keep her from breaking her body in an effort to keep from breaking her mind. Finally, he could take no more. When she woke for the eighth time and could hardly even crawl back to the machines, and yet still forced herself to repeat the process, something in him snapped. 

He could take no more of this. She would sleep tonight.

He made a quick stop to grab a syringe and some sedatives, then strode purposefully to the gym. She was sleeping when he arrived, but it was only a matter of minutes before she shook herself awake again.

Her bleary eyes took in his presence. Her mind fought to wonder why he was there, and then saw the syringe.

"No…" she croaked, backing up. "No."

"You need sleep," he said patiently.

"No. No, no, no… The dreams stay. I can't wake up and the dreams stay. Don't do that, not that. I can't… I have to…" she rolled over and tried to stand up, but collapsed, falling hard onto her shoulder. He set the sedative down beside him and picked her up.

"No more of this. You will sleep."

"But I can't dream," she whispered from a throat gone hoarse from screaming. "I can't go through that."

"You're going to hurt yourself if you keep this up."

She laughed, or tried. "I already hurt so bad."

"I'm sorry."

"S'ok. I'm used to it. I just hate dreaming so much. All my dreams turn bad. Ev'ry one. Even my hopeful ones turn black and die and hurt me. Again and again and again," she rambled before her words trailed off. "Don't make me dream."

"I won't."

"I just want to sleep."

"I know."

"I wish…" She fell silent, looking at him, her eyes filled with pain and something he couldn't name.

"What?" he asked after a moment.

She sighed and shifted her gaze. "Nothing." A pause. "Let me go, please."

He shook his head as he reached for the syringe. "You can't keep doing this."

She thrashed in his arms, tried to get away. "No! No, you can't! I'll start dreaming and I won't be able to wake up! Don't do that to me!" she sobbed, breaking down in his arms.

He set them back down, wondering what he should do. His hand stroked her hair gently as he thought, his fingers running through the strands as he weighed his options. Gradually, her struggles eased. After a few minutes he looked down and saw that she was asleep.


	78. Sharing memories

He sat and watched her, continuing to stroke her hair as she slept. The lines around her eyes did not ease, her mouth stayed set as she fought to escape into the refugee of sleep. The corners of her mouth quirked down a few times, and them the tremors began again. She shook in his arms, body fighting against the terrors in her mind. She stiffened in his arms, her mind forcing the body out of sleep in an attempt to preserve itself. Her eyes opened, unseeing for a moment, mind still caught up in the horrors of the past.

Her eyes cleared quickly, taking in her position and the relative safety of her location. He expected her to shake his arms off, to run away from his hold, and was surprised when she sagged against his chest, burying her head. She sighed, then her shoulders began to shake.

"Ah…" her breath hissed, and he could barely make out the words. "Those bastards. Those damned bastards."

"What did they do?" he asked.

"They tried so hard to break me. I didn't let them, but it was hard, so hard for so long. I may not be broken, but I think I'm cracked."

He shushed her gently. "What did they do?"

"Everything. They did everything." She looked up at him, eyes filled with pain. "I can't live through it again. I can't."

"Would sharing make it better?"

She shook her head. "There are no words."

"Then don't use words. Let me share the next dream."

She buried her head again. "I can't do that."

"Don't I deserve it?"

"No one deserves my memories. Some times I even think I don't deserve them."

"I'm asking to know. I need to know."

She looked up, eyes bleary. "Why?"

"Because I do. You keep everything about you a mystery."

"This isn't a mystery. It's just pain."

"Let me share it. Just once."

She sagged against his chest, too tired to argue. "Fine." She snaked her fingers between his. "I warned you," she whispered as she fell asleep again.

He rested his chin on her head and joined her.

*******************************************************************************

She was in a room, a cold white room, stripped naked. Chains dangled from the ceiling in the middle of the expanse of whiteness, their black links sinister. Four men wrestled her to them, manacling her arms and legs, then hoisting her into the air so her weight dangled from the arms held behind her back. Her legs were splayed, one drawn to either side, chains wrapped around white hooks on the white wall so she was nearly doing the splits in midair. It would hurt more if she wasn't so limber.

They strung her up, then left, faceless technicians doing a job, nothing more. She couldn't make them meet her eyes, couldn't see if there was malice in them or if they were just going about their daily tasks to get paid. She wasn't sure which she preferred, even after all these months: personal or impersonal torture. She could relate to both so well.

She dangled there, suspended in light pain, waiting. She could guess well enough what was going to come next, and tried to not dwell on it. She rested her chin on her chest and looked at the small grains of dirt that marred the whiteness of the floor. She was getting so well-practiced at meditating on the mundane to ignore the terror that gibbered in the back of her mind.

She began to shiver a little, the motions swaying her a bit, the movement paining her shoulders a little more. Hours passed, or minutes, she had no real way to tell. She heard the door behind her open, the soft footfalls of a man creeping up behind her.

Hands reached up and grabbed her, bruising her. Soft breath tickled her ear as he whispered his plans for her. She ignored him as best she could, closing her eyes as he began. 

The worst was when he hung on her, his weight added to hers tearing the muscles in her shoulders, slowly at first, but then, with a wet tearing sound, she dropped a few inches as her left shoulder gave way. It was followed seconds later by her right, but the slack in her chains now let her turn and bite her attacker.

She could hardly harm him, not suspended as she was, but she surprised him, intent as he was on taking his pleasure from her. He noted that her arms had torn, and bounced on her, the sounds of her screams as the flesh began to tear even more spurring his ecstasy…

********************************************************************************

And they awoke, both of them shaking. 

"I… I didn't know." His voice was hoarse with the memory of pain.

"It isn't something I care to remember," she whispered, "and it's not something I can talk about."

"I am so sorry," he said. 

"They're just memories. Why am I so scared of memories?" She turned her head to look at the floor, ashamed of her pain.

He held her chin and slowly turned her head, making her meet his eyes. "Those are horrible memories. There is no shame in not wanting to relive them."

"I wish I could stop. I wish I could get them out of my head, out of my brain. I'm so scared that I'm going to wake up screaming and not be able to stop." She buried her head in his chest again.

"I wish I could help," he said, pulling her close. 

"Hold me," she whispered. "Don't let me go."

"I won't."

She looked up at him, eyes bright. She leaned up and kissed him, a soft pressing of lips on lips.

He pulled back and her face fell. "I'm sorry," she said and turned her head away.

"No!" he started. "I mean, why? I… earlier…" He fumbled for words.

She shrugged. "I wanted to remember what it felt like, for it to be love. I think I've forgotten. Just… never mind, I guess."

In answer he leaned over and kissed her forehead.


	79. Sweet morning

Kiley awoke, warm and comfortable in Knives' arms. Her blanket had been thrown on top of them, almost covering them both. Her feet were cold, but she held herself still, unwilling to move lest she wake him and make this moment end. There was something about waking up in someone's arms that she could never get over, something wonderful and safe and precious. Nothing compared, nothing came close.

She loved the feel of bare flesh on flesh, soft skin meeting. She wanted to press closer to him, to meld her body against his. It was funny how she so adored being close to people, and yet had such a difficult time letting her guard down enough to experience that closeness. The irony never failed to amuse her. Sometimes she wondered if it was like that for everyone. Maybe it was common for people to keep themselves apart from others out of fear of pain. Maybe it was just her, but she rather thought not. There were too many lonely people out there for that to be the case.

Besides, she had long past worked beyond any feelings of being special. She wasn't alone in feeling pain, wasn't alone in feeling happy. She rationalized that on a planet of over twelve billion people, there were good odds that she was never superlative. Even on a planet of… however many people were on Gunsmoke, there had to be some that were better off than her, and worse off. But at the moment she did allow herself a brief feeling of being special. She was the only one out of all of them who got to wake up in Knives' arms.

She grinned, laughing at herself for the corny thought. Then she wondered why the happy thoughts always got labeled as corny. Was it in the nature of happiness to be so simple as to seem corny, or was it a superstitious downplaying of what made one happy? Was she so quick to demean her feelings because she was afraid that if she enjoyed herself someone would come and take away what brought her pleasure? She vaguely remembered something about the ancient Greeks, and their belief that the gods were jealous of the happiness of mortals, and, upon seeing it, stole it away.

That was a silly thought. But maybe true. Maybe she was afraid to be happy, afraid that as soon as she relaxed her guard enough to get close to someone that the gods would come and hurt her through the chinks in her mental armor. It had happened before, to her. She closed her eyes briefly in memory, memory of a dark place and evil words, then opened them, the dim light of the gym chasing the darkness in her mind away.

Damn all dreams, anyway. It was better to just make do with what you had, to take each day as it came. Dreams just caused trouble, gave people hope. And hope was the worst thing you could ever have. Hopes dashed killed more people then she ever did. It was so much better to never hope at all, but such a hard thing to do. She sighed.

"What's wrong?" came the soft voice from behind her.

"Good morning to you, too, Knives."

"Good morning, Kiley. Why did you sigh?"

"I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"Hope. I hate hope."

"Oh." A long pause. "Why?" he prompted.

"Because every time I hope for something it never comes true. Or if it does, it's never what I really wanted."

"Oh. These are fairly deep thoughts to be having before coffee."

"I wake up thinking deep thoughts, then try to not dwell on them the rest of the day."

"I see."

"What do you wake up thinking?"

"Not much, normally. Today I woke up thinking how lucky I was to get to have you here in my arms. I didn't think, after yesterday, that you would even want to be around me."

"I like being around you when you aren't mad."

"Thank you."

"That's when you're trainable," she finished.

"You!" he batted at her arm playfully.

"Me," she agreed amicably. She paused a moment, then continued in a more serious vein. "I'm sorry I reacted the way I did yesterday. I've… I've just had a few too many shocks lately, and too little time to react to them. Seeing Shamra was just one too many. I mean, not seeing her, really. But what she represents… Ah, I'm not saying it well. It was just the last event in a long chain, and I just couldn't handle it anymore. It's been a bit of a difficult year for me."

"After what I saw last night, I am inclined to say that you downplay things a bit much. I'm sorry that I got so angry at you. It was… a betrayal, to me, but that does not excuse what I did to you."

She turned over in his arms, facing him. "You realized that you just apologized twice for the same offense?"

He looked at her seriously. "I did, didn't I? You are a bad influence on me. Next thing you know I'll forswear my vendetta and plant grapes."

She laughed. "Grapes?"

He nodded. "I've fancied viniculture for a good while now. The stocks of wine in the ship are running low, and there really is no substitute on this planet. And after all the humans are dead I'll need another hobby."

"There's lots of beer," she offered.

He gave her an offended look. "Beer is hardly a drink worthy of my trained palette."

"Snob."

"Plebian."

"Snooty bastard."

"Low class bitch."

"Racist."

"Vermin."

She kissed him. 

When the kiss ended, and she had pulled back, he smiled at her. "I win."

"Did not."

"You ran out of insults."

"I never run out of insults. I just wanted to see if you would react in kind."

"Oh, was that your intention?"

"Mm-hmmmmmmmmmm," she said as he kissed her. Then she didn't say much of consequence for awhile.


	80. Bittersweet

After a sufficiently pleasant time Kiley slipped out of Knives' arms and stood. She stretched, arms held high above her head, back arched as she worked out a few kinks in her shoulders.

"You couldn't turn around while you're doing that, could you?" came a plaintive voice from behind her. 

"Pervert," she said genially. "Haven't you had enough yet?"

"No." 

She looked over her shoulder to see him smiling. "And just what exactly is wrong with this view?" she asked. 

"Nothing. The other side just has more interesting bits."

She arched an eyebrow. "Oh? It that what you call them?"

"When I'm not being a pervert," he agreed calmly. He rose, tucking the blanket around him, then leaned over and picked up his pajamas.

"Hey there, plant boy. That's my blanket."

He looked up at her. "But… um…" He picked up his shirt and slipped it on.

"Mine," she affirmed, grinning as she snatched it from him. He flushed, then quickly pulled on his pants. 

"Aw," she cried. "You're no fun."

He looked at her mock-seriously. "I have been plenty of fun lately."

She grinned again. "Yes. You have been." She leaned over and picked up her clothes, wadding them into a bundle and walking to the door, Knives trailing behind. "Aren't you going to put those on?" he asked, slightly scandalized. 

"They're dirty," she said, giving him a puzzled look as they reached the door.

"What does that have to do with anything? You're naked!"

"And there's no one here to see," she said, indicating the empty corridor. "Besides, it's just skin."

"A whole heck of a lot of skin."

"All the skin it takes to cover my body, yes."

"Doesn't walking around like that bother you at all?"

"When it's cold. And when people stare at me. Other than that I'm ok with it. Why? Does it bother you?"

"A little. I mean, I just don't understand how you can have so little modesty."

"I'm modest!"

"You're naked."

"So? It's just skin."

"Modest people do not go about with no clothes on!"

"Why not?"

"It… gives people ideas."

"And why is that my problem?"

"Because," he said, grabbing her by her shoulders and pushing her against the wall. "You give people ideas and then they want to take something from you."

She looked into his eyes, so deep and serious, then leaned up and kissed the tip of his nose. "One, I don't tend to wear nothing around people who haven't seen me in nothing before. You now qualify. Two, if I don't want any amorous advances, I am perfectly capable of taking care of any situation that may arise."

He glared at her. "You are full of innuendo, aren't you."

"Yes. It's much fun. Now let go. I want to take a shower after getting all sweaty and stinky."

"I have heard of these showers…"

"If you want to take one together, we're going to need a larger shower." 

"Oh."

"Besides… aren't you just a little hungry?"

"I guess."

"Good," she said, slipping out of his grasp. "You make breakfast, I'll go get clean."

"And dressed!" he called out after her.

"If you insist," she said with a smile. She walked back to her room, bare feet padding softly on the cool metal floor. She fought the urge to hum, but kept losing. Nothing like a few endorphins to make one rather pleased with life. Entering her room, the dirty clothes ended up on the floor, and she pulled some fresher ones out of her pack and took them into the bath with her.

The shower was long and luxurious. The warm water pounded down on her skin, sluicing away the accumulated dirt of days, the heat opening her pores and forcing impurities out. It was a wonderful feeling, clean and comforting.

Which might be why she found herself, sitting on the floor of the shower and biting back tears. Damn relaxing anyway, she thought as she leaned her head back against the wall, spray beating her cheeks and chin. Tension slowly eased from her shoulders as she let the emotions of the past day flow off her with the water.

It was wonderful, being here. But too easy to lose herself in the moment, in his arms. Yes, the sex was great… but she was more than just a bedmate. It would be so easy to lose herself in this role, in his arms. But there was more to her than that. The trouble was she wasn't sure just what that was. If one is defined by who one knows, then she was hardly anyone on this planet.

She just had no clue how to live here. She had drifted through towns until Knives caught up with her, and then she mostly gave over any initiative over what direction they traveled in, as if he were the wind and she just a feather. How did one go about, just picking up a life when they had never had one before? What would happen if she screwed things up… again?

No… she needed to go make a life for herself, to figure out who she was going to be here. Was she going to be a soldier again, violent? She was good at it, very good, but something in her soul quailed at the thought. She had lived through enough violence. She didn't want to see more. But what else did she have to offer? What skills did she have that would be needed on this dirtball? 

And… what was she going to do about being a plant? Ignoring the fact wasn't going to make it go away, but she just couldn't deal with the implications right now. To go from having died to being virtually immortal… hard concept to wrap one's mind around. Let alone the power she could tap… somehow. She hadn't figured out just where this power lay within her, but it had to be there somewhere. What was she going to do with it? What could she do with it? It had to have a better use than destruction. But giving it to her was a recipe for disaster. 


	81. Breakfast

For the love of cheese, folks... review!!

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She shook her head and tried to force the distressing thoughts away. She wasn't going to magically come up with the easy answer that made everything happiness and light before getting out of the shower. It was time to stand up, sluice off, get dressed, and go eat breakfast. She turned off the water and grabbed a towel, stepping out of the stall. The thick weight of the cloth was luxurious, and she rubbed at her hair before tossing the towel around her shoulders. The feel of her hair on the nape of her neck, brushing lightly on the towel was odd to her, and she paused to run her fingers through the wet mass. She would cut it… but Knives liked it long.

She paused to work out a couple tangles, then shrugged. Already changing to suit his tastes. She frowned, then grinned. Easy enough to fix if she decided that she didn't like it long. Dressing quickly, she toweled her hair again, trying to work most of the moisture out. She finger combed it again, and made a mental note to get her hands on a brush of some sort. The end result had to be neater than what she could accomplish like this. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, her hair slightly wavy with the moisture, and wrinkled her nose. Messy. Very messy.

She sat on the edge of the bed and fished out her last clean pair of socks. She hoped that Knives had some way of washing clothes on this ship, because the thought of wearing one of those funky little ship suits… well, she still had some dignity. She'd go about naked, first. She slipped the socks over her toes, then wiggled them en masse in their cotton coverings. Shoes seemed too much, too heavy for the day, too confining for her poor happy toes.

Laughing at herself a little, she stood. If worst came to worst, there was soap in the shower, and water. She'd cope with the laundry. Looking at the pile of dirty clothes that had appeared out of her bag and now littered the floor of her room, she shook her head. Messy pig. She kicked some stuff closer to the walls, making a bit of a path through the room, then nodded. Much better.

She left and made her way back to the room they had eaten in the night before, following her nose for much of it. Entering the room, she encountered a spread worthy of a banquet, not a breakfast. Pancakes heaped with strawberries, waffles and whipped cream, sausages and bacon and ham, eggs and omelets, a tossed fruit salad, toast of various flavors, butter, jam, something that looked suspiciously like grits, hash browns, and more. Her eyes widened as she took in the bounty, and her stomach rumbled appreciatively. Rubbing her hands together in anticipation, she looked around for a plate.

Knives held one in his hand, and grinned as she reached for it.

"Not so fast," he cautioned, pulling it out of her reach. "You have to pay, first."

"Pay?" she asked, mock-outraged. "Pay?" She stalked the two steps towards him, ending up only an inch away, body bristling with feigned indignation. Then she kissed him, deep and lingering, a meeting of lips and no more. When he leaned close, seeking more, she broke it off. 

"I paid. Now let this woman eat!" she demanded, stepping back and holding her hands out for the plate. He sighed and set it down, then watched her turn and begin filling her plate.

"Aren't you eating, too?" she asked, throwing the words over her shoulder as she tried to ladle more fruit on the plate. The grapes kept trying to roll off, so she scowled at them. It didn't help.

"I don't really eat breakfast," he said.

"You will today, buster," she ordered. "You're going to need all the energy you can get."

"Is that a threat or a promise?" he asked quietly.

"Which one gets you eating?"

"A promise."

"Then a promise it is." She finished filling her plate, not so much because she felt that she had enough, but because there was no more room for food. She carefully walked her plate down a short stretch of the table, then sat down. Picking up a fork, she set to her food with a vengeance, applying herself vigorously to the important task of caloric intake.

Knives slid some waffles and bacon onto his plate, then walked behind Kiley. He set his plate down beside her, then went to his knees, his head ending up nearly flush with hers. He rested his forehead on the back of her head, then snaked his hands around her waist. She set down her fork and covered his hands with hers, leaning back into the embrace.

"Your hair smells good," he said simply.

"Smells like shampoo."

"Smells like you."

"Then I'm glad you think I smell good."

"You smell wonderful."

"Except for when I'm sweaty and dirty and smell icky."

"Hmm." He released her, steeping back, but dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head as he stood. "That was a fairly long shower," he commented as he crossed over to the other side of the table, seating himself across from her.

"It's been a bit since I felt clean. Nothing like walking through a desert to negatively affect ones dirt to skin ratio."

"I see." He picked up his coffee and sipped at it. 

She nodded, chewing on a bite of pancakes and strawberries. "But I feel all better now."

"That's good." They sat and ate for a while, chewing in companionable silence, and Kiley let her mind wander, thinking over the possibility of having a morning like this one every day, for the rest of her life. Sure, it wasn't like she'd get fed like this every morning. And Ace would have to take her spot at the table eventually, but that would be just fine. It wasn't a bad thought. As a matter of fact, it felt pretty darn good.


	82. Why here, why her?

Knives stared at the woman across the table, who was currently applying herself to her breakfast with a gusto that would do his brother proud. The food rapidly disappeared from her plate, yet she showed no trace of growing full. There was something about her that was different this morning, something in her face…

She was entirely relaxed, he was surprised to note. That wariness that was always lurking at the depths of her eyes had disappeared. Instead of viewing the world around her with her customary suspicion, she ignored it. She seemed truly lost in thought for the first time since he met her. Her trust in him and in the situation touched him.

Fool woman, he thought. Just because we had sex, it doesn't change things. 

Much, he amended with a metal sigh. 

He eyed her as he sipped at his coffee, wondering again just how he ended up here. Not that he particularly minded his current location… but him? Millions Knives, cause of the Great Fall, killer of untold millions of human vermin, sleeping and mobile, death walking through years without end… making breakfast for one of those selfsame vermin? Had anyone told him a few months ago that this day would come, he would have laughed. After killing them for the temerity of the suggestion, of course. And for having the gall to enter his sanctum. But after that minor task was completed, how he would have chuckled over the notion.

And here he was. He took another absent bite of his waffle. Eating breakfast, and contemplating doing things with the whipped cream that he never would have envisioned a year ago.

Kiley finished off what was on her plate and went back to fill it again. He watched her, distracted from his thoughts by the movement of her behind as she walked. It was… intriguing. 

She smiled at him as she set her plate down, and he found himself smiling back, a natural action that only seemed unnatural when he thought about what he was doing.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I was just wondering how we ended up like this."

"Amazing, isn't it? I thought we'd have killed each other before now."

"We've come close."

"True enough," she said, spearing a blueberry and popping it in her mouth.

"I never thought that a day like this would come," he mused.

"What, where you calmly eat breakfast with a vermin, or that you screw one?"

He blinked at her vulgar summation. "Both, but mostly the second one. You… I don't understand. When I'm around you, I do things that seem so right, but when I think about them, they are just so wrong."

"So don't think, then. Minds are tricky things. Emotions are much easier to comprehend."

"But illogical. There is no reason for me to want to have anything to do with you, save to make you teach me your little tricks, yet… here we are."

"Here we are indeed," she said wryly, setting her fork down. "Want to talk about it?"

"No. Not really."

She picked up her fork again. "Just like a guy," she muttered to herself.

"I am a guy. How else would you expect me to be?"

She grinned at him. "I know you're a guy. I know that very well."

He blushed. "Do you have to do that?"

"What? Make you blush?" she guessed. He nodded. "Yes. You're fiendishly cute when you blush."

"It's obnoxious."

"But you're just so cute. It's impossible to resist."

"Try."

"I do. You see how far it gets me?"

"Try harder."

"Or what? You'll lock me in the ship? My room? A closet?"

He scowled. "I might."

"I quiver in fear."

"Fear?"

"Or maybe something else."

He grinned. 

"Let me finish eating first, randy one," she said with a laugh.

His grin widened, then he let it fade as he sipped at his coffee again, shaking his head slightly as he put the mug down. She had done it again. Every time he tried to remember that she wasn't worth his time, she made him laugh with one of her little comments, or distracted him from his main argument by sidetracking and then frustrating him.

She must practice.

He put another bite of waffle in his mouth and thought while he chewed. To have had sex with a vermin… his mind shied from the thought while his body ached to do it again. Really, now was not the time to be worrying over whether or not he should have; the deed was done. He had sullied himself, and found the pleasure worthy of the dirt. Yes, he had been angry, yes, he had wanted her, did want her, but he could have stopped himself. Should have? He didn't know; maybe. But he hadn't, and now he needed to incorporate that fact into his mental view of himself. Exterminator of vermin. Lover of vermin. Killer. Lover. They just didn't go together.

He resisted the urge to bury his head in his arms as he wrestled with the two opposing notions. Life had been so much easier without her. He contemplated kicking her out of the ship and going on without her, but something inside him quailed at the notion. He hadn't thought so at the time, but to live without her around, his life would be empty. He wouldn't be lonely; Ace would be out of the bulb in a week or two, but there would be a huge Kiley shaped hole in his life, a hole who's existence he hadn't even known of for the majority of his life, but having had it pointed out to him, he could not go back to the way things were.

Was this love?

He hoped not. Things were difficult enough with it just being sex.

Idly he wondered how many words Vash would use to not say "I told you so" the next time he saw him. Knowing his brother… it would be quite a few.


	83. What is love?

I'm not review greedy... I'm feedback greedy. I like to know people are reading and liking this. ^ ^

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Knives watched as Kiley went back and filled her plate again. He had lost track somewhere; this might be the fourth or the fifth full plate, and she was showing no sign of slowing down.

"Where do you put all that?" he asked as she sat down again.

"What, the food?" He nodded. "I'm always hungry. High metabolism combined with a tendency towards strenuous exercise combined with tricks has a tendency to make me a skinny girl."

"But how can you eat so much? Don't you get full after awhile?"

"No, not really. Not so I reach a point where I don't feel I could eat anymore."

"That's almost amazing."

She shrugged. "One of the fun things about being me."

He eyed the plate. "You didn't eat this much out at the oasis."

"We had to tote all our food in. I was rationing."

He grinned. "That was rationing?"

"For me it was. I used to eat over five thousand calories a day. Now, granted, my schedule has slowed down some since those days, but eating normally always seems close to starving for me."

He eyed her lanky frame. "You don't put much weight on, do you?"

She shrugged. "Nope. Not built for it." She chuckled. "One thing about being an engineered being, you tend to know why you have quirks."

"I don't have quirks."

She laughed. "Of course you don't," she said, then laughed more. "Megalomania is an entirely natural personality trait." 

He glared, then huffed. "You aren't entirely sane yourself," he pointed out. 

She sobered. "Yes, but I admit to being a villain. You still think that violence is any sort of answer."

"I do not condone violence." At her amazed expression he continued. "It's extermination, nothing more."

"I think we've had this conversation before. There are more ways to take people out than merely killing them."

"But it's safest. Your idea of a virus has merit, but what happens if it evolves, mutates into a form that can affect plants? Violence has the benefit of being precisely targeted. A bullet will kill a human just a effectively, and with much less fuss."

"And you don't get any personal satisfaction out of it? Try another one."

"Of course I do. Every human I kill is one fewer to breed and feed off the blood of my sisters. Humans are fools. You destroy everything you touch. The universe is better off without you."

Kiley laughed. "You are so caught up in your role of noble savior, aren't you?" She cut a bite of waffles and put them in her mouth as Knives fumed. She swallowed and continued. "What have you done of any lasting significance to the universe?"

"I… have killed vermin."

"Yes. You and countless other mass murders throughout history. What have you built? You, your brother, any plant? If you died today, what would be your legacy?"

"Aside from the Great Fall?" 

"That's just destruction. To destroy is easy; a child could do it. To create, to make anything that will live beyond your span of days, that's the goal you should aim for."

"I'm trying to create a utopia, a world untouched by the rapacious nature of humans."

She laughed again. "That's what you say. But you live here, in a ship made by humans. You destroy their cities, their lives, their biospheres, and what do they do? They frustrate you by just going ahead and living anyway."

He scowled and stood up. "I don't have to stay and listen to you."

She looked up at him calmly. "No. You don't. But if you're having a hard time refuting my arguments, maybe you should take a closer look at your personal philosophy. Because from where I'm sitting, it has a few holes in it."

Knives stalked out of the room, not heading anywhere in particular, merely leaving Kiley and her obnoxious mutterings behind. He found himself standing outside Shamra's room, and decided to pay her and Ace a visit.

Entering, he walked across the room and sat with his back lightly resting against the curve of the bulb. The heat felt good on his shoulders, relaxing the remaining tension from the discussion. He felt Shamra come down and sit behind him, mirroring his pose. He grinned and then sighed. He felt her inquiry, but didn't know how to put his feelings in words she would understand. 

Regardless of how he felt about the woman, there were a few problems that he just could not see how to overcome. One, she was human, and thereby deserving of death. Not really the best start to having a thing together. Two, she wasn't keen on the whole concept of genocide, and didn't fail to make her feelings known. He didn't really feel like killing her, but if she got in his way… well, he really couldn't see any other way to stop her. Three, she was highly skilled at frustrating him. Very highly skilled. Four, she didn't like his family. He rolled his head to the left, looking at Ace. Well, she didn't like most of his family. 

How could they have anything together if they couldn't even stand the other's species? It just didn't make sense. Life isn't some romance novel, where lust conquers all and happy endings abound. It was easy enough to like the woman, yes, but admitting that, what comes next? 

Shamra radiated assurance at him, and love. He sighed, then sent love of his own back. She might not understand the nuances of his problem, but she didn't need to, to try to make him feel better. She just knew that he was upset and wanted to make things better. That was love. Whatever he had with Kiley… that was different, and nowhere near as wonderful as the blameless acceptance that he received from his family.

Was is any wonder that he would do anything to protect those who loved him, and those he loved in return?


	84. Should I stay or should I go?

Kiley stared after Knives, then waited a few minutes to see if he would return. She sighed when she realized that he had really left, then returned to eating. Finishing up her plate, she decided that she really didn't want anymore at the moment. She gathered up her dirty plate and utensils and cautiously entered the room that food came out of, hoping that there would be something vaguely resembling a recognizable kitchen.

Her hopes were dashed as she looked around the room. Nothing that looked like a refrigerator, nothing that looked like an oven or stove, nothing that looked like a garbage disposal or a sink, nothing that looked like a microwave, even. The room looked very sleek and high tech, but she didn't want to go poking around and accidentally incinerate herself, or somehow make seventeen dozen brownies. Not that brownies were bad… but even she could only eat so much chocolate.

Cautiously, she set her plate down on a flat, counter-like surface, and was pleased when nothing happened. She backed out of the room and grabbed a handful of fruit as she passed by the table on her way out. Popping berries in her mouth, she wandered through the halls, looking for a computer terminal of some sort, hoping that Knives hadn't thought to shut her off from the system entirely.

It took her almost half an hour, but she finally found a door that would open and contained a monitor inside. Seating herself at the desk, she started to browse through the system, looking to see what was accessible and what was not. After fifteen minutes, she saw that the man had played an unholy amount of solitaire games, and that he thankfully did not deny her access to a word processing program.

She held her hands over the keyboard, fingers poised to strike, mind waiting for conscience to give her next actions the green light. While the actions she was about to take were not going to commit her to a course of action, they were another step that got her closer to leaving. And maybe never coming back.

The thought coalesced in her stomach, a hard cold lump that froze her. To leave forever would not be her intent, but she had no reason to assume that her presence would be desired here again. Maybe after getting information out of her, Knives would have no further use for her. Maybe leaving, she would hurt their feelings so much that they wouldn't want her back, just on principal. Maybe this was the only value she had.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. There were a lot of options available at this point, and none of them particularly happy. Maybe she would stay here, and she and Knives would lead the life of a storybook romance. 

She chuckled, a less than happy sound that the walls seemed to eat, leaving the silence of the room more oppressive then it had been before. Maybe not.

Her fingers settled on the keys, then began to strike, pounding out letters in a rhythmic pattern. She cast her mind back over books read; pages, leaflets, papers, all kinds of information that she had devoured in her desire to learn as many tricks as she could. Word for word, letter by swiftly typed letter, she poured them into the file. She did her best to not think, but only regurgitate what she had memorized. Three hours and twenty thousand words later, she quit for the day, saving the file and password encrypting it, not so much because she believed that Knives would not be able to break the password did he so choose, but because she hoped that her obvious desire for privacy would be a deterrent to his curiosity long enough for her to finish.

Stretching, she worked out a few kinks in her spine. Her stomach informed her that it would not mind eating again, so she wandered back to where she had left the food. Peeking her head in the door, she saw that nothing had changed in her absence, save some congealing of the fat on the bacon. She browsed through the food selections once more, finishing off the toast, fruit, and waffles before wondering back out of the room. 

She made her way back to her room and palmed open her door. Walking unseeing past the clutter on the floor, she ended up on the bed, pillow over her eyes. Having finally amassed enough calories, her body was demanding a sleep period in which to process them. Her mind, however, was reluctant to let go.

Had she done the right thing? Was leaving even the right thing? She wanted to stay as much as she wanted to go, was balanced on the cusp of a decision. She could be happy here. Happy. Her. The concept was almost more than she could comprehend.

Or she could go back into the world and try to figure out if she had a purpose. She had needed a purpose to keep her personal demons at bay, but didn't she get to leave those behind, now? No one here cared about her existence at all, save Knives and Ace. There were a few other lives she had touched, but none of them would really care if they never saw her again. 

She tossed and plumped her pillow before settling down again. Yes; she could leave the only people in the world who cared about her, and then… go do what, exactly? What would she learn out there that she couldn't learn here? There was an enormous catalogue of texts in the electronic library; she could read up on this world for years, become well versed in its intricacies.

But… that information would all be secondhand, colored by the interpretation of the one who wrote it. There is no substitute for first hand information. Ask any soldier whose recon they trusted most, and it was always their own. She would learn best about this world by being in it, not by taking on the role of some ivory tower academic, knowing so much that she knew nothing at all.


	85. Startled awake

Kiley awoke, her eyes slowly opening, her brain barely processing. All the food had made her a bit logy. So it took a while for her eyes to focus. And see another pair of blue eyes, close. Very close.

Startled, she jumped away, hitting her back on the wall. She winced, and the face attached to the eyes laughed at her. Her mind started to work again, and if she hadn't hurt herself, she probably would have found it funny too.

But she had hurt herself, so she spared a moment from her wincing to glare at him. "That wasn't funny," she accused.

"Yes it was," he countered, sitting on the side of her bed, one hand resting on her knee. She suppressed the urge to move it away. His hand was warm, very warm. She wondered idly if he was running a bit of a fever.

She glared again, decided that he was healthy, and rubbed her spine. "That's going to bruise," she remarked to the pillow. The pillow did not respond, but Knives laughed again. 

"You don't blink when you break your arm, but whine when you bruise your back. Interesting dichotomy."

"I'm whining because you woke me up; the bruise is incidental. Besides, back injuries can be nasty." She changed the subject. "What do you want?"

"To talk."

"Talk then," she sighed, sitting up. Knives' hand trailed down to her ankle, but he didn't stop touching her as she moved. She fought a blush and won. Maybe it had been awhile since anyone had touched her like they enjoyed it, but that was no reason to blush like an innocent. Which she wasn't.

"Well… I was wondering what your plans were. I mean, for while you're here. Obviously, teaching me," he said blithely, and she snorted, "but you must have other hobbies."

She shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not really hobby oriented. Never really had any spare time. I'm not very good at just sitting around. It feels weird."

"Slow times are good for planning things out."

"Plans? What? Are we supposed to hash out how you're going to destroy humanity and I'm going to stop you over the dinner table?"

He stopped smiling. "Well, no…"

"Then what exactly am I supposed to be planning? I'm not a psychotic, trying to chance the world to fit my vision of perfection. Even when I was trying to get into politics I was never that crazy. "

"That's up to you," he said, smiling again and squeezing her ankle. "I'm sure you can come up with something important to do with your time."

"You had to wake me up to be so helpful?" she snarled.

He let go. "No… I was waking you up because I wanted to talk to you."

"You said that."

He looked at her, cocking his head to the right. "Why are you in such a bad mood?"

She sighed. "No reason I feel like sharing." Like hell she was telling him she was thinking about leaving. He thought he had her trapped here. He might, even, though she doubted that. But if he had any clue that she was thinking of running out, he would check and recheck every egress, and she would never get out. If she wanted to. Which she wasn't sure of, yet. 

"I thought women always wanted to talk. I mean, it's not like you can ever get them to shut up. Always going on about their problems and kids and such," he mused.

"You really aren't helping your case here," she informed him, then leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder. She closed her eyes and sighed. Why did this have to feel so right? Why was she willing to leave here? Why couldn't she be content to stay? The feelings and reasons that had been floating around in her head clamored for her attention, but she pushed them away. She didn't want to think about that right now.

His hands slowly came up and snaked softly around her, lightly holding her to him. "What's wrong?" he asked softly.

"We are. We're all wrong. You, me, it's all wrong."

"I know." One hand stroked her hair as she scooted closer.

"How am I supposed to make plans? How am I supposed to think about tomorrow when I don't even know how today is going to end?"

"I don't know."

"Then what do you know? How am I supposed to know that you aren't going to wake up tomorrow and decide that since I'm human I need to die? Or that you're mad at me and I'm human and it's a good time to kill me?"

"I'm not going to do that."

"How sure are you? Because I'm betting my life every day I'm near you, aren't I? You and your annihilation of the human race program. Why not start with me?"

"I'm not going to kill you."

"Promise?" She looked up at him.

His face was solemn as he nodded. "I promise."

"Good." She laid her head on his shoulder again.

"Ace would kill me," he continued.

Kiley thumped him on the back.

He leaned his head on top of hers. "I don't know what has happened to me."

"Me, either. I thought, coming here, that all my dreams would come true. And now they have, or almost, and I find that I don't know what to do anymore."

"Your dreams?"

"I wanted to be loved. I want peace. And I can have them both, but they aren't what I thought I'd be getting."

He held her closer. "You came here for love?"

She nodded against his shoulder.

"And you were sent to me?"

She nodded again. "Hard to believe, I know."

"Amazing that someone thought we could be compatible at all."

"Even more amazing that they could be right." He didn't say anything, but held her closer still. She relaxed against him, basking in the warmth he radiated. "My life is so crazy," she sighed, then said nothing more for a while.


	86. Making a plan

A few days passed, seemingly quickly at times, and dragging by at others. Kiley continued to work on her compilation of tricks, and Knives developed a tendency towards wandering around the ship a lot. He popped his head into the room she had chosen to work in a few times and tried to look over her shoulder, but she closed down the file each time he tried for an unauthorized glimpse. He asked a couple times what she was working on, but she waved him off and he allowed his curiosity to go unchecked. He did go behind her back to make sure that she wasn't doing anything that could harm the ship, but after he saw that she was working in a text file, he let it alone. She promised that he would see the fruits of her labors in less than a week, and he was mostly content to wait. 

Kiley spent hours typing, working hard on her opus. It took shape under her fingers, her mind molding it, making it easy to follow. She was afraid at time that she was making it too easy, that she was over-explaining things. She was careful to explain everything in detail, afraid to skip over something that was obvious to her. Just because she knew something didn't mean that Knives would. Her background was much different from his; their childhoods, their worlds, everything. She didn't want to cause problems that she wouldn't… maybe… be there to fix. So she carefully went over every detail in her mind, hashing out every thought, every motion, every factor and potential factor that went into a trick.

Then she had to parse down the number of tricks she knew to the ones she felt she should teach. Some of the more instantly lethal tricks she dismissed out of hand. One person knowing those on this planet was one too many. She would be happy if they died with her, would be happy if she didn't have to know them anymore, herself. And if she did have to teach them to someone, Knives would not be her first choice. Or her second. Or anywhere near her top one hundred. He was lethal enough already; he didn't need the help.

After one long session of dancing about the dangerous tricks in search of some that were useful, she sighed and buried her head in her arms. She was tired, and drained, and wondering if she should even be doing this. This was hard. Much harder than teaching him herself would be. Much harder than staying, waking up every morning to Knives, and Ace, and being loved. So why didn't she give up? Why did she keep working so hard on this? Sometimes she buried the answer, but this time she allowed it to float up to where she was able to ponder it.

She was scared. Scared to stay. She could admit that, if only at times like these, when she was alone and tired. Who was she to be happy? When her life had fallen apart, part of her had welcomed it, welcomed the pain and everything that came after. She deserved the evil things that happened to her. No part of her questioned her need for punishment. But is was very hard for her to believe that she deserved happiness. Someone like her? The notion could barely enter the realm of possibility before being laughed back across the barrier to fantasy.

She rested her chin on her crossed arms and remembered the last time she could be considered happy. Even then, it hadn't been like this… No, more like she was content with what she was doing, that she could help where others could not. That there was someone to hold her in the night when her demons invaded her dreams. That she had a purpose. Most people hated combat, hated the danger. She thrived on it, on the rush, on dancing that fine line between coming home victorious or decaying. She hadn't really cared about the danger, then. It was all a game, death something she richly deserved, so she didn't fear the consequences of her actions. 

But now? She didn't want to die now. She wanted to stay here, wanted to live, wanted to love, wanted to wake up and go to sleep and have nothing of consequence happen during the day. That sounded like such a peaceful way to be.

But how long would that last? How long until Knives noticed she wasn't aging? She was sure that even with the warmer side of his nature showing he had not given over his crusade. Would it be five years, or even ten, before he actively started planning the decimation of humanity once more? And would he pester her to help? She didn't want to see him use what she taught him to cause death. She had seen enough.

She sighed again and closed her eyes, the light from the monitor annoying her retinas as she mindlessly stared at it. She had to admit that he had a righteous grievance. The people on this planet were acting like parasites, siphoning away the lives of his sisters. Hers, too, she guessed. There had to be some way to solve this dilemma, some way of stopping the drain without having to resort to genocide. She just couldn't see it, not yet. But she was sure it was out there, some solution, if she could just find it…

She opened her eyes and drummed her fingers on the table. That's what she'd do. She go out and fix this problem. Then she and Knives could go off and live happily ever after, without having to worry about any deep, traumatic issues like the future of the planet and its inhabitants. Maybe… they would go start a vineyard. She liked growing things, he liked wine. It could work out. It was a plan. It was a good plan. Maybe a little fuzzy on the details, but she could deal with that piddly stuff when she had to. 

She sat up and started to type again, refreshed. She had a plan. 


	87. Sleeping beauty

Knives loved waking up in the mornings. Kiley slept later than he did, and it was the only time he could just sit and stare at her. There was a vulnerability about her while she slept, a softness that was erased when she woke. 

Her lips were barely parted, breath passing slowly through as she inhaled and exhaled. Soft and pink, they were losing the chapping from the wind they had sported for the past few months. Her lashes lay against her cheek, the darkness in stark contrast to the tan of her skin. He slightly envied her the dark lashes; his were pale and faded, blonde hairs barely noticeable from a distance. The line of her brow helped define the shape of her face; what seemed stubborn while she was awake was merely the mark of determination while she slept. The skin that had stretched so tightly over her cheekbones was beginning to soften after a few days of massive caloric consumption.

He was surprised over how much food she managed to put away. She almost managed to put his brother to shame, and that was a task, indeed. She never did seem to slow, to grow full. But he had to admit that she did look more healthy now, that there was a glow about her that showed in how she moved, how she reacted. Her temper seemed to have calmed a bit, and while he would have liked to take credit for that, he had a feeling that it was more due to increased blood sugar levels than anything he might have done. He wondered absently how much her rationing had affected her mood, while they were traveling around. Surely she seemed more even tempered these past few days.

He smiled. If all it took to keep her happy was food, he would be happy to supply. She still hadn't asked how the kitchen worked, and he liked the look on her face as he brought out plate after plate of food to volunteer how to teach her.

Careful to not wake her, he shifted his weight and dragged his arm along his body until he could prop his head up on his left hand. He lifted his right and slowly moved it over the curves of her body, hovering a fraction of an inch above the skin. He basked in the heat that radiated off her, imagined the smoothness of the skin under his fingers. He ached to touch her, but this moment was fleeting enough already; he refrained, putting his hand back by his side. 

It felt so good to love her. If that was what this was. He enjoyed seeing her happy, making her happy. When she was pleased, he was pleased. He tried to not dwell on the oddity of that statement, the concept that the pleasure of a human could positively affect his mood. But… she was not a normal human. There was something in her that called out to him in a way that no other human had. Maybe it was her firm desire to be treated like an equal, her stubborn insistence that she was as good as he was despite having her face rubbed in the fact that he was superior.

Most humans fawned, trying to ease his rage by becoming a sycophant. Others merely knuckled under, rage burning in their eyes when they thought he could not see. He loathed the first, and was amused by the second, but neither type gave him any reason to respect them. He enjoyed that the first group so easily accepted that he was a superior being, but he hated how they threw over any attempt at control over their lives after meeting him, Legato being a case in point. The man had been useful, there was no denying that, but he was a disgusting worm who enjoyed masquerading as a man. The second group was a bit more entertaining, if only because watching their good sense battle with their control could be so much fun. He could push and push and push at them, and they had to take it, not matter how much rage they felt. They would be more enjoyable if they ever tried to challenge his superiority, but aside from the suppressed rage, they did his bidding as quickly as they sycophants. It was a wee bit boring.

But Kiley… she had merely looked at him with those golden brown eyes of hers. Just looked at him, as if what she saw was not worthy of a reaction on her part. Accepting. That was what she was. She just looked at him and accepted that he might be better than she was. Not that she believed it, or fought against it, but that she accepted the possibility. Then she did her best to prove him wrong. Not necessarily through words, nor through actions, but by proving that by being the best that she could be, that she could challenge him. Much as he would like to blame her advantage on those tricks of hers, he knew now that the real reason lay deeper, lay in the way she viewed the world… and the way she viewed him. The way she accepted him, and what he could do, but refused to let that define how she responded to him.

It was amazing. Wonderful. Unexpected. And entirely too rare. He sighed. Too bad she was afraid of his other form. She was almost perfect, otherwise. He sighed, mouth quirked in a wry smile. Maybe she would learn. Maybe she could.

He looked again at her face, at the lines of pain that were etched around her eyes and mouth, lines that grew deeper as she slept, not eased. She was so strong, to bear so much pain and still forge on with her life. He was not sure that he could go through what she had and stay sane. Just the parts that she had shared with him were enough to give him nightmares; he wondered what pain she kept hidden within that heart of hers. 

Maybe some day she would trust him enough to share. Maybe someday he would trust himself enough to be able to bear it. 


	88. It sucks, I'm tired, I'm sorry

I know it's short, but I am dead tired. Sorry…

*******************************************************************************

Kiley stared at the finished word processing document. It was complete, now, text, diagrams, tables and all. The finished project was huge, nearly a million words of text, plus hundreds of images she had cobbled together from encyclopedias and any media source she could access. It was as detailed as she could manage, as well plotted as she could devise.

Rubbing her eyes, she skimmed the document again, looking it over for any discrepancies, any glaring errors or anywhere that she might have glossed over some important detail. And she saw nothing. She ran her hand through her hair and absently noted that it no longer stood up straight after she did that. It was too long now to get fun and spiky. She rubbed at the back of her head and thought about the feel of the strands of hair under her fingers.

She sighed, realizing that her concentration was shot, and closed the file. It was done. She locked the file for a few days. That should be long enough to give her time to pack and leave, and a deadline. She would have to be gone before this file became active. Otherwise, there would be too many questions, leading to the wrong sorts of answers, and she would never get to leave. 

It bothered her more than a little bit that she was going to leave before Ace came out of the bulb. While it was true the child had chosen to leave her in the desert, she was going to have been here and left before the child got a chance to see her. If their roles had been reversed, she would be immensely hurt, and didn't think that Ace would feel any different. She did plan on leaving a note, but it would be a pale substitute for actually being here. She sighed again, hating herself for leaving so soon, but knowing that it was necessary. Right now Knives harbored no suspicions that she was about to go; he was still entirely enamored with the thought of their relationship that the thought of her leaving would not even enter his mind.

Come to think of it, she hadn't even seen Ace since her first day here, and… her horrible reaction. She sighed and buried her head in her arms, ashamed of her reaction, afraid, and ashamed of her fear. She had made a reputation for herself of never running from things that other people feared, never lying. Lying is only admitting that you are too weak to handle the truth. That was her mantra. But the trouble with reputations is that they can trap you. She was known to tell the truth, known to face things that would send others running in fear, but she did so in part because she was known as a person who would. She was strong enough to face reality.

At least, she was when she could forget that she had been an assassin. When she could forget she was loathed. When she could forget that she loathed herself. Her entire life had been built around what was no more than a lie itself, that she could face the world head on and with no illusions. 

And here, with a new start? She was doing it again. She should just tell Knives that she was a plant and get it over with, tell him and no longer have that sword hanging over her head. But she was afraid. Too afraid to be something other than human, to be a freak that looked like a monster to survive in an environment that would kill a human being in seconds. She couldn't admit to that. Instead, she wrapped the tattered remains of her humanity around her like a shroud, and hid under them.

If she pretended long enough, could she become normal? Would she ever be just another one of the faceless masses, no better, no worse, no different from a million others? She had never wanted to be special, had had it thrust upon her the moment she was conceived. 

She moaned softly. What bothered her, what had always bothered her was how she was special through no great action or feat of her own. An intermingling of two bloodlines, and she was interesting as a breeding experiment. Daughter of an enemy, and she was worthy of enmity. A tool. And then, finally, someone that she felt she could be proud of, someone special through her actions. And that last person was destroyed because she had been a special object before learning how to be a person. And now she was a plant. One of four known wanderers on the planet. Yippee.

It wasn't fair, and she was so afraid that it was going to happen here, going to happen again.


	89. Saying goodbye

The blue light of the room struck her as eerie the second time she entered. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the bulb, peering into the murky depths, trying to make out the figure that resided within. She saw nothing. Whoever lived there was hiding from her, and she could not blame them. She didn't tend to be nice to people who ran screaming from her, either. Actually, she had been known to kill them, just out of spite. Her steps slowed a bit as she pondered this fact, but she forced her pace to remain steady as she continued her walk.

Her steps were slow but unfaltering as she forced herself to the back of the room. Her hand tried to shake as she reached out for the railing to the steps, but she forced it still, trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. She was strong enough to handle this. This was her new reality, this whole plant thing, but it wasn't going to hurt her. No one was going to put her in a bulb. She would be fine. There would be no changing, no shifting of her form from one familiar to one alien. She was going to be just fine.

She found herself paused on the top stair, and forced herself to get moving again. She worried that she might have stood there a long while, arguing herself into moving forward. She hoped that Knives was still preoccupied; this moment was not for him, and she would hate to have him barge in. Time had seemed to stop there, for a moment that could have been seconds or minutes, for all she could tell in retrospect. 

Moving around the platform, she found where Ace lay sleeping, then sat with her back against the railing and watched her. She still looked positively precious, innocent and harmless, her still, small form curled slightly. Feathers wrapped themselves around her body like arms holding her tight, and for a moment Kiley wished that she could hold her, just once more before she left. Then she pushed that thought away, unwilling to dwell on what seemed to her to be an inevitable future around so many mind readers. She was fairly sure of her ability to keep her thoughts private, but it only look one slip to make her life more difficult.

She hated that this was goodbye. The silence of the room was oppressive, pushing down on her. The blue light pulsed slightly about her, unwelcoming, and she knew that Shamra, for all that she was still hiding, had yet to forgive her. Her eyes drifted from Ace's still form to take in the rest of the bulb. She had to force herself to scan the area, but she saw nothing. Tension danced up and down her spine, and she wondered if it was for the better or worse that the plant stayed hidden.

Scooting forward slightly, she inched closer to Ace until only the glass was in her way. One hand reached out, pressed as close to the glass as the heat would allow, and she sighed. This was too far away, and it was as close as she could get. A tear threatened to fall, but she forced it away. She would not mourn her decision; that would be tantamount to admitting she might be wrong to go. But oh, how her heart ached all the same. Leaving, for whatever reason, was awful. 

She didn't want to go. She wanted to press against the glass, melt it away and take Ace in her arms and never let her go. She wanted to open her heart and her mind to both of them, to stop hiding, stop running. But she couldn't. She had a plan. 

And it wasn't like the reasons for her leaving were all things she could change. Regardless of her species status, Knives was still going to want to wipe out a mostly innocent population. She could not let that happen. And he was right, the plants were being abused. She wasn't going to let that exploitation continue. And she could not fix the problems of the world from the comfort of this ship, from his arms. No matter how much she may want to. It wasn't possible.

She sighed again, sitting back on her heels. Just when she could be happy. Just when life could be perfect, or almost. She had to go and grow her conscience back completely, to finally admit that society had a right to demand a portion of her time and effort. She understood, in part, Knives' desire for an under populated Eden. Fewer demands on her time, to be sure.

She scowled slightly, more a wrinkling of her brow than a proper frown. Someone was probably laughing at her, amused by her pain. As a matter of fact, she was sure of it. Someone probably took great glee in dangling her fondest wishes in front of her and forcing her to choose between what was right, and what would make her happy. It was just the sort of angst ridden decision that would appeal to a meddling, interdimensional being who seemed to delight in playing with her emotions.

She scowled more deeply, then a flicker of movement brought her out of her reverie. Her head shot up and looked directly into the eyes of Shamra. The scowl melted off her face, to be replace by a more sheepish expression.

*I'm sorry,* she sent.

The plant just looked at her, eyes solemn. 

*I was wrong to react the way I did. If it's any consolation, it had much less to do with you than it did with me.*

Feathers swayed slightly. Kiley didn't ask for forgiveness, and none was forthcoming, but Shamra did not retreat, either. The tableau was static for a decent span of time, then Kiley rose to her feet, turned, and walked out of the room. She did not look back.


	90. A letter

Dear Ace,

I don't really know how to say this. I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke up. I know it sucks. I know you probably feel that I could have stayed around long enough for you to get out of the bulb. But I couldn't. I had to go quickly, or I would never be able to go at all.

You probably wonder why I had to go, anyway. I'm not sure I have what you might believe to be a good reason, but it's my reason all the same. Staying around you and Knives, I'm beginning to lose pieces of myself. Maybe that's a good thing, but it hurts. And I'm too much of a sissy to be able to stay here and stop being myself.

Ah, this is all coming out wrong. I just wanted to let you know how much you truly mean to me, and how much it hurts me that I'm not going to be here for you. Leaving you is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made in a life full of hard ones. I don't really want to, but I think, in the long run, that leaving now is best.

I hope to see you again before too long, but I've never been so good at seeing the future. I've come up with a couple ideas of how to spend my time while I'm away from you guys, and I think that they are decent plans, but I don't know how long it's going to take me to get things done. Hopefully not too long, but I don't see them being very quick, either.

I'm sorry. I think that's all I really want to say. I am so sorry that I'm leaving you. I realize that this isn't fair. I realize that it sucks. And I'm sorry.

Much love,

AnneMarie Salome Judith deBelville

******************************************************************************

Kiley folded the piece of paper, placed it in an envelope, and sighed. That didn't go as well as she might have wished, and it was only a letter. Maybe it was best that she didn't get to say goodbye to Ace. She would certainly just make a hash of the whole situation. Just like she had done such a wonderful job on this letter.

She almost tossed it in the trash, but she didn't. She hadn't written it to be a picture of perfect epistle writing, but to give Ace something tangible, something of her to hold on to. It wasn't much, but it was the best that she could do for her. 

She ran her fingers through her hair. She had finally acquired a brush, which helped matters immensely, but the damn stuff kept falling into her face and tickling her nose. She pushed it back, tucking it behind her ears and trying to hook it behind her shoulders, but it fell forward anyway.

Giving up, she leaned back and let her head droop backwards as she stared at the ceiling. It was very blank up there, she decided after a few minutes, then got up, dropped the envelope on top of the dresser, and grabbed another piece of paper. 

She tapped the end of her pencil against the table, thinking hard. It was almost a relief when Knives knocked. Almost.

She set the pencil down and went to the door.

"Are you ok?" he asked. She looked at him quizzically, and he continued. "It's well past lunchtime and you hadn't arrived yet. I was beginning to wonder what was keeping you."

"Nothing important," she lied easily. "I just got distracted."

"With your stomach? That's hard to believe."

"Yet true," she said jokingly. "Believe it or not, I am more than a stomach with legs."

He put the back of his hand over his heart. "Say it isn't true!" he joked.

"But it is!" she protested. "There are other parts to me, too!"

His eyes traveled over her body. "And such nice parts they are." She ignored him, so he pinched her bottom.

"Hey," she said, laughing as she swatted his hand away. "That hurts."

He danced away a step or two, just out of easy swatting range. "I thought you had a high tolerance for pain."

"Pain, yes; idiots, no."

He stopped, mock hurt. She kept walking. He trotted a few steps and caught up with her as she entered the kitchen.

"You are so cruel," he moaned. 

"I've been called that before," she allowed, grabbing a plate and picking through the spread.

"Evil, mean, heartless, cold, unfeeling."

She nodded absently. He continued his litany, and she tuned him out, applying herself diligently to the process of eating.

His tone changed, and she started listening again.

"You stopped hearing me, didn't you?"

She shrugged, mouth full. She swallowed and nodded. "You weren't saying anything I haven't heard before. Although people generally said it with a bit more heat."

"I was just teasing," he said, looking slightly hurt. His blue eyes looked so sad, his shoulders slumped so precisely that she knew he was trying to put one over on her. So she laughed.

"I know you were. But just because you were teasing doesn't mean I had to pay attention. You never know; I might have been so hurt by those words I didn't hear that I would cry myself to sleep, heart broken into little tiny pieces."

"Tears are for sissies," he teased again.

She stuck her tongue out at him and he grinned. "I am a sister, you know. Well," she frowned a bit, "I was. Do I get to claim family from another dimension or not? I mean, it's not like she was ever here."

"Family is family. You don't get to not claim them."

She smiled slightly as she looked up at him. "No disowning the black sheep?"

"No. Not allowed."

"So which one of you is the black sheep? You or Vash?"

He gave her a condescending look. "Vash, of course. The poor deluded fool." He shook his head sadly as he said it.

She half-grinned. "Oh. Of course."


	91. Leaving the ship

Kiley awoke early the next morning, long before either sun dreamed of dawn. Her eyes opened to find herself curled on Knives' chest, and she spent many long minutes listening to the slow, steady beat of his sleeping heart. The repetitive noise calmed her as she found the courage to face the day.

Gently, she reached out with her mind and ensured that Knives would slumber on until after she was gone. Then she sat up, the sheet slipping from around her shoulders with the barest whisper of cotton over flesh. She threw her feet over the edge of the bed and stood. Stretching and yawning, she collected the clothes she had worn yesterday, kicking them into a pile on the floor. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then went into his bathroom and had a glass of water. 

She paused as she walked by the bed, then slowly sat near his head. A lock of hair had fallen over his eye, and she brushed it away with gentle fingers. He looked so peaceful as he slept. In a way, she wished he could stay like this the entire time she was gone, innocent of the pain she was about to cause him. Her fingers carefully traced the curves of his face, imprinting the memory of him on her flesh and bones. She smoothed the hair away from his brow, then dropped a quick kiss on his forehead. 

Pulling back a few inches, she looked at his peaceful expression, memorizing it to take with her. Then she softly kissed him on the lips, staying there, unwilling to leave, for a full minute. Finally, done with her silent goodbye, she sat up. Her eyes were closed as she leaned over to pick up her clothes, and she kept them shut as she left the room. As she walked through the hall, she opened them, centered herself around what she saw now, and tried to put Knives out of her mind completely.

She succeeded well enough to be able to pack up her bag quickly and toss it over her shoulder without pause. Her room was emptied of her presence so easily, the only tangible evidence of her stay the two letters she left behind. The gray walls stared at her accusingly, their blank faces reflecting the harsh light. She sighed, once, as she reflected on how easy it was for it to look as if she had never been here. 

She wandered through the halls of the ship, retracing her steps to the front door. She fumbled with the keypad for a few more minutes, then succeeded in tricking it open.

Only to see Vash and Meryl on the other side. Dawn had come as she sat and looked on Knives, and had grown and passed into day as she exited the ship. The two of them looked to have been camping by the ship for a few days, and she blinked a few times as she startled them away from their morning coffee. 

"I was wondering if you guys were ever going to notice us out here," started Vash as he saw the doors were open, but his voice trailed off as he took in Kiley's bag and traveling attire. "Oh. Things didn't work out," he said flatly, but with a faint hint of compassion.

Kiley shook her head and cleared her throat before hazarding words. "No. Well, yes. Sort of. Not like you're thinking. I just… need some time to figure things out."

Vash nodded slowly, comprehension absent in his eyes, but Meryl looked at her with understanding and compassion. "It's not easy, loving them," she said simply as she poured a cup of coffee for Kiley.

Kiley took it gratefully and nodded. "It's not easy at all," she agreed, taking a gulp of the very strongly brewed stuff. "I have some other things I need to think over as well, big things, and I just need some space of my own… to come to terms with things, I guess."

"I know how it is. So, Knives is just letting you go off like this?"

"Well, um, no. Not really. Or at all. Actually, he has no clue I'm not going to be there when he wakes up."

"When he wakes up?" asked Vash with a grin. Meryl shot him a dirty look and he pretended to be assiduously cleaning his nails. 

"Do you think he isn't going to come after you?" asked Meryl, a bit incredulously. 

"Actually, I had that figured out. I was going to lock him in there. So I don't suggest that you go visiting for a bit, unless you don't want to leave for awhile."

"How long of a while?"

"My guess… four or five months until he figures out how to take down the barrier I'm going to put up."

"Barrier?"

"It's an energy thing. I'm going to key it to chromosomes. Anyone with a Y chromosome won't be able to pass through it."

Meryl looked at her oddly. "You… are just going to wave your hand and make a magic barrier."

Kiley cocked her head the side and sighed. "No. It involves a lot more than waving my hand and very little magic. Think of it more as applied quantum physics."

Meryl looked pointedly at Vash. "Your brother collects some of the most interesting people."

"He does do that," Vash remarked, looking up for a moment before reexamining his fingernails.

"I guess we'll be coming back in a few months, then," declared Meryl. "There's no way I'm getting trapped in that ship with your brother for any length of time."

Vash sighed and nodded, then stood and moved off to begin packing. Kiley sat and nursed her coffee, warming her hands and delaying the task to come. She watched the two of them as they squabbled over chores, smiling slightly to herself, wondering if she would ever be that close to someone. 

Then she squinted her eyes, peering at Meryl. There was something wrong, something off…

"Meryl, did you know that you're pregnant," she commented softly.


	92. Could it be possible?

Vash dropped the pan he had been holding, then fell to his knees as he picked it up. He looked at Meryl, face drawn and pale, not allowing himself hope. Meryl turned to look at her. "That's not a funny joke. He's a plant. I'm not. We can't have children."

Kiley shook her head. "I'm not joking." She looked more closely at Meryl. "You aren't too far along… I'd say about a week, but you are really pregnant."

"That's impossible."

"How do you know?" asked Vash softly.

Kiley shrugged. "She looks pregnant to me. I can check the fetus, if you'd like."

"How? How do you, can you?"

She shrugged again, spilling coffee on her hand. She paused a moment to suck it off her skin. "I… how do you explain how you see? I mean, optical nerve, cornea, rays of light, right? Well, it's sort of the same sort of thing, only not the same because it's completely different. It's the same as how I look at my own body to heal it… sort of. I just… know. Damn," she sighed. "I don't have the words. It's just… a way I sense what's going on around me, what's happening in people's bodies." She looked at the ground unwilling to see what was on their faces as she stumbled over words.. "That sounds very invasive, doesn't it. I mean, it could be, but it isn't, it's not like I'm staring at people, more like I'm glancing at them, and I just noticed that you, well, you're pregnant. In a glance. Sort of. Only without using my eyes." She finally shut up.

Meryl's voice had a slight quaver in it as she responded. "But… he's not a human being… How can I be pregnant?" Kiley risked a glance up and watched Vash rise to his feet and take Meryl in his arms before her eyes sought the ground again.

"I have my own theories about how inhuman plants are," she muttered. Then she looked up. "I can check you a little more thoroughly if you'd like," she offered.

"Yes," said Vash, quickly. "I need to know. We need to know."

"Ok," she said ducking her head in a quick nod. "Just, come sit… no, I'll go over there." She set her coffee down and walked the few feet to them on her knees. "Just sit. This might take a while."

"Ok," said Meryl breathlessly. "Will it hurt?"

"You won't notice a thing," she promised. "Does it hurt when people look at you? No," she babbled. "Everything that's going to happen is going to happen in my head. It's just easier for me to sense if I have a tangible connection."

Kiley slid into a light trance as she opened that part of her senses that looked beneath the surface of things. She slipped her hand under Meryl's shirt, laying her palm flat against her lower belly. "You've been pregnant before," slipped out of her mouth.

"What? I've never been…"

"But you keep miscarrying. Give me a minute to look and see why."

"Oh." The pain in that soft syllable was palatable.

"Hmm." Kiley took her hand away and backed off a bit, giving her some space.

"Hmm?" repeated Meryl, demandingly.

"Well." She paused. "Well. Hmm."

Meryl's eyebrow twitched. 

"Um."

"Just, tell me, please," asked Meryl.

Vash stayed silent, but he was very pale, and still clutching Meryl to him tightly.

"Well, you are pregnant. Chromosomes say it's a boy, but it's still too early for anything to be developed. There is one little… discrepancy. And it's likely the cause of your previous miscarriages." She fell silent again, thinking.

"What?" demanded Meryl, as more than five seconds passed.

"Well, plants were designed to mature more quickly, both in and out of the womb. Your body was not designed to nurture a child as quickly as this one grows, does not adapt to the changing needs of the pregnancy at the right points. So what happens is that the needs of the child outstrip your body's attempts to provide for him, and he dies… kind of like through malnutrition? Well, not entirely like that, but the same sort of concept. He doesn't get what he needs when he needs it and he dies."

"Oh. Oh, no. How horrible."

Kiley continued to look at the ground. "If it's any consolation…"

"How many times?" interrupted Meryl.

Startled, she looked up. "Huh?"

"How many times has this happened? How many times have I been pregnant? How many times," her voice caught, "have I not been able to have my baby?"

"I don't know. I can't tell," she lied. 

Vash spoke. "Meryl. We're going in the ship."

"What?"

"The best prenatal facilities on the planet are going to be in Knives' ship. No one has used them since before the Great Fall. Hormones and such, explanations of where your body needs to be, what it needs to be producing in order to care for him, everything we need to help you nurture our child will be in there. It will be fully stocked and supplied, and I guarantee that we will be able to force your body to carry this child."

"Is… could you? We? Is it possible?"

"It's worth a try."

"Then let's do it." They flew apart, throwing things into bags with wild abandon. Kiley quickly gulped down the last of her coffee, then handed the empty mug off to Vash, only to watch it going flying into a bag.

"Thanks," he said absently as he tried to pack without taking his eyes off Meryl.

She sighed. "You do realize, than if you go in there, you guys are going to get caught behind the barrier."

Meryl paused in her packing. "You're still leaving?"

Kiley nodded. "It's really now or never."

"But… I thought you might help."

"You guys don't need me around. And I have to go. It shouldn't be too bad; likely the barrier will be down before the pregnancy is over. Are you guys ok with that?"

Vash looked at her. "We could just keep Knives here. I don't think you need to go to such lengths."

Kiley grinned, a wry, lopsided smile that was full of irony. "I don't think you'll be able to stop him long enough for me to get away. Speaking of which," she said, looking up at the suns, "I'd best be starting now." She backed off about fifty feet from the ship, and stood silently, eyes closed as she gathered her concentration and energy. She raised her left hand and solemnly intoned, "Boys suck."

Vash and Meryl both goggled at her. "That's it?" he asked as she picked up her bag. 

"Try it," she beckoned.


	93. She's gone

Vash slowly walked forward, an intent expression on his face, his left arm stretched out in front on him as he searched for the barrier. Which caution did not stop him from bumping his toes on it.

"Ow," he said, leaning over to rub his toes. "Ow," after hitting his head on it. "Ow ow ow ow," after whacking his right hand against it. He ended up on his butt, rubbing various parts of his anatomy. "You can't see it," he whined, his eyes pained as he looked at her. "That's not fair!"

"No, Vash. You can't see it. But it is there, isn't it?" she replied with a grin. 

"Yes. It's really there." He stopped rubbing his head and stood to try again, left arm outstretched, the rest of his body angled well away from the searching arm, and cautiously inched forward. 

He still managed to bump into it. His left hand had passed beyond the barrier, being not flesh, and he jammed his right hand against it. "Owies!" he exclaimed, backing up a step and shaking his hand. "How did… oh. Heh."

"Yes. It's based off genes, not some strange body aura that comprises a sense of Vashness." He looked at her oddly, and she rushed past the weirdness. "If it's not flesh, the barrier won't stop it. If it's not male, the barrier won't stop it. It's really not a very strong barrier; just specific."

"So, Meryl can pass through?" He was testing the barrier, poking his left arm through and pressing his right against it, then poking at the fingers of his right with the index of his left. "This is so strange," he muttered under his breath. He leaned one knee against the barrier and reached out as far as he could with his left arm, waving it about in mid-air. Kiley was tempted to just sit and watch his antics. The puzzled look on his face was priceless.

"Yes. But let's not test that," she said after a few minutes of watching him try to get through the barrier. Her favorite was when he tried to stick another finger through the "hole" made in the barrier by his mechanical arm. That was hilarious. "She is pregnant with a boy, and I don't think you want her to miscarry."

"Oh. Yeah!" Vash left off playing with the barrier and ran back to Meryl. "Well, see ya later, I guess," he said with a wave, hustling her and their baggage through the door. Kiley watched them go, bemused at the sudden flurry of activity. She shook her head after watching the door close behind them, then sighed as she turned around and faced the desert. At least she was getting to leave with a bit of a smile.

*******************************************************************************

Vash and Meryl had made a straight line for the infirmary. Well, as straight a line as they could make with the improvements that Knives had made to his ship. Regardless, it was their first stop. And it happened to be where Knives found them. 

"Hi, Vash, pet," he said distractedly. "Seen Kiley?"

"This morning, as she was leaving," said Vash as he looked up from slathering jelly on Meryl's stomach.

"Damn," he sighed, then leaned against the doorframe. He massaged his temples with his left hand and sighed again. "Damn, damn, damn," he repeated sadly.

"Did you guys have a fight?" Vash asked, leaving off the jelly and looking around the room. Meryl pointedly ignored Knives and the entire conversation, suddenly finding herself engrossed in the ceiling tiles. Fun things, ceilings. She could pretend that Knives wasn't there at all if she didn't have to see him. And his voice… she could just be hallucinating that. Easily.

"Not recently. Not for a few days, at least. That's a long time, right?" He paused, thinking about time, and days, and the nature of the fourth dimension. "She really left?" He ran his hand through his hair, distracted.

"Yes. She put up a barrier around the ship. You and I can't get through."

Knives' hand drifted down from his hair to his nose, absently fingering the red mark there. "I noticed," he said sadly. He shook his head and really looked at what was going on.

"Vash… why are you doing that?" He stepped into the room a couple paces to get a better look. "That's prenatal equipment."

Vash stopped as he reached for the ultrasound. "Um… You're going to be an uncle. I hope."

"So she finally messed around on you," he said, looking disgustedly at Meryl.

Meryl gave off staring at the ceiling. "I did not!" she yelled, then blushed, paled as she remembered just who she was yelling at, and returned to staring at the ceiling. 

"It's my baby," Vash said calmly, rearranging the position of the monitor and picking up the device to roll over her belly.

"That's impossible. She can't be pregnant. Not with your child. She's just a human."

"She is. Kiley said she's been pregnant before, too. She just can't keep the baby, not without help."

"She can't be pregnant." Knives shook his head, trying to shake the annoying concept away. "You're certain it's yours?" he repeated, rubbing his temples again.

"Yes. She is pregnant; it's mine."

"How far?"

"Kiley said a week. But the fetus develops faster than Meryl's body can nurture it."

"If she's a week along, you aren't going top see anything with an ultrasound."

"You're not?"

Knives rolled his eyes and sighed. "No. It's still smaller than the tip of your little finger, moron. Try finding that in her body. If there really is a baby." 

"Oh. There really is a baby. We did a pregnancy test."

Knives turned to leave, not really able to take this in on top of Kiley's abrupt departure, then paused. "You guys staying here long?"

"Until after she has the baby. I can't leave until the barrier goes down, anyway."

"Oh. So a few months then," he mused to himself. "You leaving right after the thing is born?"

"Your nephew," Vash stressed, "and yes."

"Good." 

He walked away, muttering to himself. "I should have stayed asleep," he whined to the empty hall. 

Then he found himself on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees, sobbing and wondering why he was crying. She was only a human. Nothing special, no one to think twice about. He should be glad she was gone. Glad that she had decided to stop polluting the air around him with her presence. Happy that he no longer had to look at her, or feed her.

Or touch her, or hold her, or hear her laugh, or watch her move. He choked on his tears, and coughed. "Why," he whispered. "Why did she have to go now? Why did she have to come at all if she was just going to leave so soon?" 

He sighed, wiped at the tears on his face, and forced himself to his feet again. Why did all this have to happen now? Why did Vash and Meryl have to be here, when all he really wanted to do was curl up in a ball of misery and cry. He'd never hear the end of it if Vash caught him crying.

He looked back the way he had come and saw his brother standing there, looking very awkward. 

"What?" coughed out Knives. "Do you have something you want to say?"

"I'm sorry. You really like her, don't you."

"No."

Vash ignored that. "Meryl and I both saw that, the way you reacted to her in the desert. She likes you too."

"She left."

"I'm sure she had her reasons."

"I know her damned reasons," he snarled, hands clenching at his sides. "I don't care about her reasons."

"You just want her here." Vash took a couple steps forward, then lowered his voice. "She loves you, I think. It hurt her badly when you left her in the desert."

"I know. I'm a bastard. Vash, what's new about that? She's just a human; why should I care about her feelings?" He paused, huffed, then continued. "I'm the one who's hurt now."

"I know. And I'm sorry to see you like this."

"What?" he yelled and glared at his brother again taking a few steps toward him until they were only a foot apart. "You must love it. Your brother making a fool of himself over a human. Must make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

"I have never wanted to see you hurt. Ever, Knives. Ever."

"Well, it hurts now, Vash," he said angrily. Then his face crumpled, and he fell into his brother's arms. "It hurts so damned much now." Vash just held his brother and let him cry, stroking his hair and making soothing noises as Knives grieved.


	94. Farewell

Dear Knives,

Is it ok if I start this letter this way? I don't want to offend you or anything, but it is a typical salutation, and I'd be lying if I said that you weren't dear to me. That, and I spent five minutes trying to think of some other way to start it and came up with nothing. So I stopped procrastinating, and you are a dear. Dear. My dear one. 

I'm very sorry to do this, and in such a cowardly way, but if I said I was leaving to your face, you wouldn't let me. So I'm leaving while you sleep, and making sure you sleep long enough for me to leave. I'm not taking chances; you're a dicey guy to know, and unless I make certain that I can leave I am sure you would find some way to make me stay. And I really have to go.

I don't want to go, I hate leaving you, but I'm… losing pieces of myself staying here. You know that I died before I came here, and that I was basically tortured to death. You know, that's not something you just get over in a few days, or weeks, or months. I'm hoping it won't take years… but I don't know. I feel… fractured inside, broken into little pieces, and I can feel the bits slipping away as I stay here. 

It's… all of this is too perfect, but it's a very superficial perfection. I love you, but I can't trust you. If I let you know where I'm weak, I know you'll use it against me. And… I just can't live that way at the moment. And I know that you don't trust me, either. I don't blame you; I haven't been very forthcoming. There is a lot you don't know about me, and I don't mean about my past. I mean about the person I am now, why I act the way I do, think the way I do.

I am a seriously messed up individual. Birth to death, I can easily say that my life sucked. And you don't get to just walk away from your life and say that since it's over you're free. I was shaped by some of the most horrible things that can ever happen to a person. It isn't a pretty shape.

I am not a good person. I'm violent, I have a horrible temper, I'm very used to getting my own way, I have a tendency towards melodrama, and I am not very trusting of anybody. The only thing that keeps me from being a very bad person is I try very, very hard not to be. But it is hard, and I'm not very good at it.

Um… sorry I shot your leg.

Basically… I'm leaving because I need to figure out who I am now. I did die; this is a fresh start; I have new chances. But I'm still the same broken person inside. I have to… 

I'm sorry. I am a fool. But I still need to go.

I made a file that holds almost all I know about tricks. There are a few I will not share. God willing, they die with me. But the rest of them, bar one are in there. And that one… oh, you'll like it. I'm sure.

You see… to keep you from following me, I'm going to put up a barrier around the ship. It's an easy little thing, was actually designed to surround a woman's bathroom. It keeps guys out. Or in your case, it will keep you in. I've left enough clues in the file for you to be able to figure out how to take the barrier down. My guess is it will take you four or five months. Hopefully, by then I'll have come to some sort of terms with this life.

Or, you may decide that I'm not worth your time. We aren't a very well matched couple, that's obvious. You may not want to come after me after the barrier comes down. I guess that's a risk for me, huh? Instead of getting tired of me, that you just realize you just wanted me for what I knew. I guess I'd prefer finding out that way… less painful for me if you just never show up. 

But… I will look for you, every day. For the rest of my life, if need be. Because, even though I'm losing myself, I know this.

I love you, Knives. You have my heart, now and always, until the day I die. Right or wrong for each other, good idea or horrible one, I will always love you with every fiber of my being. Always.

I'm sorry I am such a screwed up coward. I understand completely if I never see you again. I hope that someday, though, I will.

Love,

AnneMarie Salome Judith deBelville

aka Kiley

P.S. Is it ok if I say love, too? Because I do love you, plant boy. Screw it. I love you, I'm saying love. Deal with it.

*******************************************************************************

Well, folks, that's it. Story is done. It only took me seven months of nigh-continuous updates, and ended up being 210,000 words. Dang. That's big.

Hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. It was a fun ride, and I could have made it a bit longer… but, I am getting a bit tired of updating everyday. That's a heck of a lot of writing, and no one has really been reviewing lately. 

Yes, I am a review whore.

So… I guess it's good bye, now. I might post a bit more, someday. I have a few *honestly* little fics. Those may get written. But for now, I'm just going to relax, remember what life was like before I spent hours writing everyday, and finally, maybe, actually get unpacked from my move. In March. 

If you liked this, let me know! (see review whore comment) If you didn't… well, I tried to keep Kiley from being a Mary Sue. She really isn't very much like me at all, except for the stubbornness bit… she's just an obnoxiously capable woman. Which really is why she was the perfect match for Knives.

But since life isn't perfect, and neither is she, she left. Wimp. Coward. 

So… you are now spared from my horrible writing. I swear, you guys only liked this because I updated frequently and managed to be coherent. 

Ja ne!

Heh heh heh… you guys thought that this was the end? Actually, I'm just going on vacation for a little over a week. The sequel begins when I get back. You aren't done with me quite yet. Sorry 'bout that….


End file.
